in her own words:

 

"As background (no pun intended), I should say that I started off the month of July by having a lumbar laminectomy and spinal fusion, which sounds a lot more complicated than it is. Ok, it IS complicated, more so than, say, college algebra or Web design, but it's also something that can be explained in plain English. (I find the details fascinating, but if you're prone to queasiness, you might want to fast forward to the next paragraph.) It involves the surgeon making an incision of several inches in your low back, retracting the muscles from the spine, and then taking a good look at your vertebrae. After getting the lay of the land, he takes a very tiny tool (picture an exceptionally small razor) and begins peeling off the lamina, or outer layer of the vertebrae. Doing this gives him access to the Source of the Problem (not a medical term). In my case, it allowed him to take off some bone spurs, get rid of the cyst that was pressing on my sciatic nerve, and remove the collapsed disk. To finish the procedure, he created a space between the two offending vertebrae (picture a little tiny tire jack), connected them with titanium rods and screws, and then inserted a titanium “cage” (a mesh cylinder) filled with something called BMP (Bone Morphogenic Protein), a material that stimulates new bone formation. BMP is what I would call a Good Thing in that it obviates the need to use bone taken from another source—namely me. After the surgery, which takes about three and a half hours, the doctor stitches you up and, for good measure, staples the incision shut. Some time later you wake up in a faraway place (or so it seems), wondering how you got there and why you have been dropped from a 14-story building."