jennlk | Twelve weeks tomorrow.

And the doc says I'm doing just fine. The bone grafts are just a cloud around the cages right now, but he says it looks fine. The screws and rods haven't shifted. There's a little bit of disc bulge at L3-L4, but he's not sure if that's new or not. There was some there before the surgery, and there's some there now. Not enough to cause any trouble, though. The joints haven't shifted any, and that's really what he worries about at this stage of recovery. Still some mild inflammation, which flares up when I do too much.

He says that most patients feel "back to normal" somewhere between 3-6 months. I'm not sure I'll recognize 'normal', as I've been dealing with this for over half my life.

He didn't release me to rehab yet. He expects that he'll do that at the 6 month checkup if the grafts keep developing at this rate. He did release me to the gym, with the only restriction being "don't be stupid". OK, that's not what he said, but that's what he meant. :) So I can do my pool work, and light weights. Yay. I think.