3 week post-op appt. ~ January 8th

I am sitting in our hotel in Columbia, MO. Chris and I and the girls went to KC, MO today for the post-op appt. We left at 6:30 a.m. with an expected 4.5 hour drive. My appt was for 12:30, so this gave us an extra 1.5 hours on the road. The side roads were snow covered still and Hwy 70 was pretty clear, with some patchy snow. Lauren had an incident of car sickness on the way to the appt., so between cleaning that mess up and stopping for breakfast and going slower than normal, we showed up at our appt. at 12:31. I met with Debbie, Dr. F's nurse and went over my current state of health. She looked at my incision and said that it looks really good for 3 weeks. I explained that I feel really good, with the exception of lower back pain. The Vicodin seem to cut out my pain 80% or so. They don't know if my lower back pain will get better or not. They said time will tell. They informed me that I need to really watch what I lift and what I do, even if I am feeling better. They cleared me to take tub baths or go swimming. I can drive short distances. Dr. Fiegenbaum came in and said hello and I got some pictures with him and Debbie and even Laura, the clinical coordinator. I will post these sometime soon. I will also try to post my operative reports when I get home. Dr. Fiegenbaum said that I did have a tethered cord and that I had a giant sacral meningeal diverticulum. We got to our hotel and then met up with some friends that moved to Ashland, south of Columbia, the kids got to play at the biggest Burger King play area that I have ever seen, perhaps the biggest one ever built. It was nice to catch up with them. We got back to our hotel and the girls wanted to go swimming. The pool was cold and the hot tub was pretty cool, too. Then we got up to our room after swimming and our heater wouldn't turn off. The girls fell asleep and we ended up having to change rooms. It was miserable. I love being warm, but I can't sleep if I am too warm. The window in our room was iced shut and Chris couldn't open it. We just got to our new room and I am very tired, so I am ending this post. We are heading home tomorrow.