It's official - six months after spine fusion and I am back to normal. Well maybe even better than what passed for normal  for me before recurrent lower back pain morphed into incapacitating sciatica  - cured hopefully forever by the application of cutting edge (ooh  bad pun) spinal surgery.

When your surgeon tells you that he does not want to see you again, that's a GOOD thing. Apparently bones are knitting together appropriately and the titanium hardware remains in the correct place so I am free to bend, rotate, extend and lift weights, and generally keep on leading the active kind of life I enjoy.

 I find myself happily resuming the frenetically active lifestyle that i was leading before catastrophe struck.  In the last couple of months my travel / food / theatre / writing has sequentially taken me further afield to Whistler (Five Days of Fine Dining), Toronto, Stratford and Chicago. My titanium screws and I have been through scanners in Canada and the US without making any strange noises, and I have comfortably hoisted a carryon bag into an overhead bin with greater ease than in my  B-S days. And that's not what you think but Before -Sciatica  and Before - Surgery.

The munchkin-me of 6 days post surgery - sore, scared, skew, saggy and sixteen pounds heavier than B-S  has strengthened and firmed into smiling, straighter, six pounds heavier than B-S, GI Gill  - well I'd look just like Demi More if I lost thirty years and those darn six pounds. 

And I am working hard and getting back into shape for those wonderful ballroom dancing cruises. Tahiti to Honolulu is coming up in a couple of months and I cant wait.

So apart from the in-process video of the transition from the activator urban poles to the Nordic style poles, which I hope to finish as soon as I catch up on my writing, this will be the next-to-last post of the Sciatic Spinal Surgery Saga.