" surgery is December 7, 2011

Hello everyone.
Thanks so much for the many prayers for me and my family.
I spend Friday morning in my surgeon's office. He gave me a good examination and then we discussed the 5 back surgeries. The new Doctor is in the same practice as my back Doctor and this Doctor assited with my third back surgery in June of 2009 when they cut the outer lining of my spinal cord and had to have another doctor to come in and help. So, the procedure is a hour or so long and they make two small incisions. He has to cut away some bone on my spine to be able to place the sensors on my spine. Then a battery is implanted in my lower hip area and that is under the skin deep enough that you can't see it but I can feel it if I was to press on that area. I will have to stay in the hospital over night and then the representive from the company that makes the device will come in the next day before I go home and show me how to program it and how to recharge the batteries and I have to have the battery unit replaced every 5 years. I am praying that this will help to ease the pain so I can get off of the pain medication! Right now, I am on 30mg of time released morphine every 12 hours and I have 10mg perocets that I can take in between for break thorough pain. This additional amount of morphine has had me sleeping more and more. But, that is to be expected. I am just so tired of hurting and tired of complaining about hurting. I want to be able to get up and do all the things that I have planned in my mind to do. Well, most days my body will not let me. I have become a flexible person LOL I now keep stamped images or printed out images from the computer in a large ziplock bag. When I am stuck in the bed because of pain either laying on a heating pad or ice pack. I cut out those images and if the are stamped images. I color them in and then cut them out. I have all kinds of thing ready to use when I feel like crafting and sitting up for an extended period of time. It has gotten to the point that if I lay down for a while or sit in a chair for a while, then when I go to get up, I am stiff and it hurts to move. So, please join in my prayer that this will take away all the pain that I am feeling and that I will be able to get my life back.

We spent the evening with my neice and her family. My great nephew will be 3 in December. We went over and they grilled hot dogs and hamburgers. Then one of their friends came over with her 3 year old. The Mom had bought some play dough cookie dough. It looked just like the color play dough we all played with when we were younger. My neice did not have any cookie cutters I told her she should have called me but hey that is an ideal for a Christmas present. Well, we made cookies as best we could making shapes out of the dough. The little kids gave up and were happy to eat the dough from the containers LOL we put a stop to that. We made suns, flowers, faces, and so on. I even made a red strawberry with green seeds and green leaves at the top. Well we all sat in the floor to do this. Hubby had to get the fork lift to get me up out of the floor. Not really, but you get the point.

Well, I need to get off of this computer and finish my Christmas ornaments for a swap and finish packing up some swap goodies for a pal or to.
Hope you all have a wonderful weekend,
Hugs,
Lynn