Things Aways Break When You Need Them Most

I have spent the last three weeks in bed and have three more to go. It's a good thing we have a comfortable couch so I don't have to live in the bedroom. That old blue couch is falling apart, but comfort wins out on looks every time.

A 62 inch HD TV with TiVo is also a mind saver. I bought a bunch of books and Dan & Barbara sent me a bunch of magazine (thanks guys), but you can only read for so long. The pain and pain pills makes it hard to concentrate, so despite my promises to myself I am becoming a real TV addict. At least I was, until the TV broke. And as things always go the day after the 62-incher went out, the TV in my bedroom broke. These things always come in threes, I'm wondering what's next.

The TV in the bedroom is older than the hills and is done, but the 62-incher is a different story. Tania got out the warranty information and low and behold the warranty expired two days ago. That's right TWO FREAK'N DAYS AGO. We called them anyways hoping someone would be nice. The good news was that we were in a grace period and could extend the warranty for $400. It will take three days for the new warranty to process then we can call to set up a date for them to fix it.

Okay, knowing that it will likely take a few weeks to get that set fixed it was now time to think of what to do about the old 32-inch GE in the bedroom. I found out that today, if you want a TV bigger than 27-inches you have to go with HD or plasma - no cheepies. So I got the coin out and flipped it to see if we were getting a new TV for the bedroom or Christmas presents for the kids. Christmas won.

We have 25-inch Sony in the office that Crystal uses for video games and a 20-incher in the extra bedroom. So after a little shuffling around (thanks to my brother in-law, Alex), I now have the Sony in my room and Crystal's gaming is down gradeda to a 20-incher and Drew won't have TV the next time visits.

So I have a small screen, no HD and have to suffer through commercials and watch whatever happens to be on at time, at least I have something to watch.

Man Gives Birth

I am sure you have all heard about this one. Man gets pregnant. Man gives birth. Man gets pregnant again because he wants his daughter to be a big sister.

If you missed the 20/20 show on this you should go to their web site and watch it.


http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=6244878&page=1

I don’t know if this really qualifies as a man getting pregnant as Thomas Beatie (the pregnant man) was born female and had a sex change but kept her internal female organs. When Thomas discovered his female life partner could not get pregnant, they decided that Thomas would carry the baby. So while I don’t think this really qualifies as “man gets pregnant” I do think the pictures catch your attention and make you think WOW.

Whatever you think about this, from the interview, they seem like a nice caring couple who will be good parents. The fact that his wife started lactating after the baby was born may be a sign that god feels the same way.

If you are freaked about people who desire sex changes, just remember that about 1 in 1,500 babies are born with visibly noticeable atypical genitals to the degree that a specialist in sex differentiation is called in. This is the numbers for visible at birth, there are a lot more people born with subtler forms of sex anatomy variations, some of which don’t show up until later in life. What you see on the outside does not always define the gender of a person.

I now know what's like to be stabbed in the gut with a kitchen knife

After spending the last three weeks flat on my back and more of the same for the next three, I decided to join bloggers. Unfortunately for you the readers, I won’t have much to blog about. I big event of each day is that I get to go for a five minute walk once a day. Whoopee! I don’t know how I’ll contain my excitement.

I had an anterior interbody lumbar fusion. This involves:

1. A four-inch incision below the belly button on the left side.

2. While one doctor holds things out of the way the second doctor removed what was left of the disc between by L5 and S1 backbones. (that is where the backbone connects to the tailbone). Actually, for me this step involved removing scare tissue instead of disc tissue because the doc said that was all that was left.
SIDE NOTE: I wonder what makes a great hold-the-guts-outta-the-way doctor stand out from the merely good ones.

3. Two titanium screws are drilled into each vertebrae.

4. The vertebrae are pushed a part. They were about 1/8 of an inch a part; they are now about an inch. Some fibrous material in inserted between the discs. Bone will grow over this material thus creating one big vertebrae.

5. A plate is screwed on between the two vertebrae to keep everything in place.

While the bone is growing between the two vertebrae, I need a lot of bed rest. I can’t even sit up for very long periods of time and every time I get up I have to wear a brace. People who have become active too soon have actual caused the screws to pop out or break. It will take at least three months for the bone to full fuse the two vertebrae.

Some days the pain is better than others, but I have noticed that if I sit up and/or walk around too much on the good days, I pay for it later. My worst pain is in my left leg. It only occurs occasionally, but I get real bad nerve pain and muscle cramps.

This type of procedure has about a 70% chance of providing some improvement in pain. The big question is how much improvement will I get? Only time will tell. Oh, and I forgot to mention, my disc was so far gone that I may even be measurable taller now. :)