Recovery: Doctor's Orders

Wow! Your emails and phone calls of encouragement this morning and all throughout the day were amazing - YOU are all amazing! I cannot thank you enough for all of your support!
Everyone keeps asking, "How did it go?" Well... it went...
The best thing that I could have done was asked my mom to attend. She was quite the advocate! (And so was my wonderful husband!)

Here are the facts:
- Structurally, the swelling around the incision is down and according to x-rays there has not been any harmful movement, so the pain is not coming directly from the Spinal Fusion Surgery itself.
- We won't know if the surgery "worked" until the 1-year mark... so we have some work to do in the mean time to get me better and some patience to work on (LOL!).
- The theory is that the pain is coming from severe muscle tension. While my PT and The Surgeon still have not come to an agreement on the fact of whether or not my muscles were strained during the first few months and set me back in recovery (she says "Yes!" he says "No!"), they did agree that my muscles currently are in over-drive and are the cause of my atypical pain...

Next Steps: Time, reduced stress - and the biggest step of all: Pain Management Strategies (they are going to find and set me up with a Pain Management Specialist who works specifically with people who have pain caused by muscle tension). For now, I need to keep my work schedule at the 3 days/week, I need to stay positive and I need to keep focused on my healing.

One interesting thing that was noted is that stress amplifies the muscle tension (duh, right?!?!) but who'd-a-thought that it could play this big of a part in my healing... Physical Stress and Emotional Stress are both working against me right now - so Gage and I are committing to focus our prayers on these two areas (please join us in agreement)!

Everyone knows that the first year of marriage is stressful. Everyone knows that being a Special Education Teacher is no piece of cake. Everyone knows that trying to sell a house in a dying market is beyond a burden to anyone, let alone a couple who is working with a reduced income. What I learned today is that the body, literally, at times has "a mind of it's own." With their (my Medical Team's) theory, they think that because my body has dealt with muscle tension and back pain for SO many (about 10) years, my body does not know how to reduce the tension once something triggers it. This is all connected to nerves and neurons and bruised muscle tissue... a lot of things that are out of my control, but some that are also controllable. I'm fascinated and terrified at the same time by this information! The hope is that the Pain Management Specialist can re-train my body to respond to pain and the things that cause pain so that my healing may come. I am believing for this - please believe with me!

Again, I thank you ALL for your love, encouragement and support! Thank you for praying for me!