On 17 February I spent the day at Dr. Verska's office getting MRI's, x-rays etc. Well it is as bad as I had expected. I have had spinal stenosis before back in 1992 when I had two surgeries for L4&5. Well it has come back again this tine with L3&4. This time it is worse than before. I will have to have a laminectomy and a lumbar fusion.

I don't know when the surgery will be scheduled yet, but it will be fairly soon. They are waiting for approval from my insurance and I have to wait 10 days with no aspirin or ibuprofen to ensure I have no blood thinning meds in my system before surgery.

Enough of the depressing stuff. I'm playing with my Fujitsu 810 mini computer which is a tablet PC with hand writing recognition software. I have had a little fun getting used to he default Windows writer. I used it on my last blog and to be honest it was a bit of a pain! Today I'm trying a new program called ritePen.

I'm not sure if I'm going to like this any better but The program is a 30 day trial version so I will give it a good try out.

The only reason I'm considering using this is because of my upcoming hospital stay. I really don't want to drag my laptop into the hospital. I have some articles to write plus my first ebook is nearly done.

I really would like to get to know how to use this because it would be a lot more convenient for writing and more preferable than typing on a keyboard.

2/19/2009

My insurance company called this morning to say the operation was approved. Now I am waiting for Dr. Verska's office to call with the actual surgery appointment. When I talked to Sally, his assistant I pleaded for the earliest date possible. She was in their Twin Falls office and said she would call me back as soon as she got back to the Meridian office.

2/20/2009

I got the call this morning from Sally. My surgery is scheduled for next Wednesday. That is a load off of my mind. Now I can prepare and concentrate on getting this behind me.

2/24/2009

Tomorrow is the big day. Last week the Dr. took me off my anti-inflamitory medication (aspirin & iBuprofen) and now I am really hurting. I guess beside eliminating the blood thinning effect of those meds the, in my case anyway, pain level has wratcheded up to the point I am begging for relief and glad the surgery is soon.

I will be off network for a week or so and will let you know how things went after I get back home and feel well enough to care about a blog.