man, do i hear you on this as well as Pam; i had my 3rd back surgery in July and now have a scar going from just under my shoulder blades to all the way down. my friend, Lorraine, says i have the longest ass-crack in the world!

while in the hospital, they also discovered that i have cervical & thoracic disk/vertebrae problems (i had a fake ‘heart attack’ – a cervical compression they didn’t know was there – that put me in cardiac care also);

before the surgery, which went well but had major complications right after, the neurosurgeon made it very clear that there was no guarantee that all of the pain would ever go away; it hasn’t but i am no longer on the narcotic; i had to get off it; i just couldn’t stand it and i was addicted! luckily, my primary is an expert on substance abuse & addiction (he maintains some of his regular patients) and deals with kids at Depaul U.; he was great with me. i’m only doing maybe 6 tylenol a day if i need it & he allows me to have some Vitamin V on hand if it gets really bad; otherwise, i live with the pain.

in addition, i am a calcium factory; not only was my spine loaded with spurs but i produce kidney stones like making candy! the last one, Pam, was a 12 and was the length of my index finger! i told the x-ray tech he was crazy until he showed it to me; that was an additional two procedures.

the thing is i’m not going to stop; i’m going to go on and do what i need to do and realize that sometimes i just can’t do some things; i even went to Honduras for a long weekend to work with my schools in the mountain region; the kids make me feel better than any pain med…!