Surgery day

I'm doing pretty well so far. I've been sleeping on and off most of the day, as the morphine seems to do a great job of sending me of to la la land. I came in at 7:00am this morning and was being put under at about 8:40 as I was the first surgery. I asked if they would be willing to take some pictures during the surgery and they said that would be fine. And boy did they ever, they took 41 pictures all together with some great shots of each stage in the process, including a picture of my new disc right after they put it in my spine! I'll post some of them later, as I'm just using an iPad my friend Austin loaned me which has been really really nice, but I can't transfer the photos from my moms camera to it.

Before I was taken off to surgery, I had a consultation with the anesthetist who explained what would happen and reviewed all my information. Not long after mr. Boeree came in and we reviewed the risks once again and I signed the consent form. (In the uk, surgeons go by mr. Instead of dr. A tradition dating back to the days when surgeons were not medical professions, but rather tradesmen.)

I woke up in recovery and was wheeled back to my room where I fell asleep for a while. the nurses come in and check on me about every 15 minutes and take blood pressure, temperature, and look things over. I have been using the morphine pump maybe once every 45 minutes or so,not because I'm in much pain, but rather to stay ahead of it. So far I've had a little soreness around the incision, which is not too bad, but other than that, I've felt great so far. I'm expecting the pain to kick In tomorrow once they have me off the morphine pump and up and walking around. They put a catheter in so I haven't had to get up, but they said that should come out tomorrow. I've not been allowed to eat since they need to wait until the intestines wake back up as they can take a while to come back online after being jostled a bit during the surgery. So only ice cubes today. I have heard a few gurglings from my stomach already which is a good sign.

Mr. Boeree came to see how I was doing after the surgery and again this afternoon when I was a little more awake. My mom had transferred the photos onto her computer and mr. Boeree actually walked through them all with me, explaining exactly what was occurring in each! That was pretty cool. He said he put in a large, 10mm height disc with a 10 degree lordosis and had excellent placement of the disc. I don't think I've ever had a doctor take so much time with me, which has been outstanding.