Surgery

Vic & I went to her surgery consult yesterday and it looks like the only way to fix her problem and relieve the pain is to have surgery. Again. Poor Vic, she's in a lot of pain now ~ it's affecting her neck, shoulder and radiates down her arm into her fingers. Parts of her arm and hand are numb and the pain just keeps getting worse. The surgeon says the problem is with her C4&5 in her spine. During the last surgery, in 2001, the doctor replaced her C5&6 vertebra and inserted a plate. This time the doctor is going to remove the old plate, take out the bad bone and replace it with cadaver bone and then put in a new plate. He'll enter by making an incision in the front of her neck, again. The whole procedure lasts about 2 hours and she'll spend one night in the hospital ~ the worst part of the whole surgery is the recovery. Last time she was out of work for 3 months and in quite a bit of pain almost the entire time. The doctor says she'll miss at least 6 weeks this time, too. That whole area of her neck was so tender that it hurt just to ride in the car, so she spent a lot of time in the house. Her surgery is scheduled for August 17th, so we're going to try to get as much stuff done around the house as we can to make it "recovery friendly." The upside to all this is that when it's all done she'll finally be pain free again. And she'll catch up on all her reading!