Back Again, Post Surgery (Or, Post Again, Back Surgery)

I'm back. I had surgery (on my back!) three weeks ago, and so now I'm just recovering. Turned out, when I finally had an MRI, that I'd been having all the back pain because there was a disk extrusion the size of a pinky nail, sitting on my sciatic nerve. So all the waiting and stretching in the world wasn't going to make the horrible pain go away.  

I'm much better. The shooting pain down my leg is almost completely gone, thank goodness. The doctor said that there was probably some permanent nerve damage, so ill have to wait and see. For now, no Bending Lifting or Twisting (BLT is the mnemonic,which doesn't seem necessary until you are a physical therapist talking to a drug-addled woman who is about to be released from the hospital less than 24 hours after having back surgery.)

The problem now is that if I follow doctor's orders for some walking and more resting then I feel good (!) and THEN do too much unintentional BLTing (as my college roommate puts it) and THEN get all sorts of uncomfortable nasty painful swelling. 

I'm still taking some pain meds and apparently will have them available as needed for awhile. I still can't drive, but I'm getting used to that--haven't driven since December, anyway. Worst of all, can't really make art, although I've been doing some jewelry stuff and some work with clay since I can do those while sitting or lying down. I've been doing loads of eBaying and Etsying and pInteresting on my phone (two of which are very dangerous--and don't even get me started on Amazoning!).

I got a kindle fire from my wonderful family for Mother's Day, so now I can read and write as well as the above-mentioned activities. Katie just came home from Cal State Long Beach for the summer, and Joel is done with college classes too, so we are all five of us home! Jenny has eighth grade graduation in a couple of weeks, and thank goodness for Katie, who helped her find a gorgeous dress to wear and bought her a pair of silver pumps on sale in Long Beach that are every petite sized fourteen year old girl's dream (though not what her mamma would pick out ;)

So I'm going to try and make a commitment to posting more often, including pictures of what I'm working on and thinking about. 

Back to Art, I say!