[JJames]

Hello Kimmers,
Yes we have certainly corresponded here on the boards before. I appreciate your reply and your compassion. The pain is excruciating today! Cold and rainy weather is always the worst for me. I almost wish I would get fired from my job over this. Just as you mention in regards to not using a cane, walker, etc that those who do not really know what severe back pain is like, they also assume because I take all my pain meds and somehow push through this terrible pain to make it through each day at work that it simply can't be too bad. It's so unfair. On the other hand I can't forget about my responsibility to my wife and children's financial well-being.

I just know that nothing is gonna' come from this appointment with the surgeon on Wednesday as usual. I simply don't know what to do, and it seems that there's no one who really does! I am so sorry that you were able to manage to actually have a surgical procedure which was supposed to help, and yet you are still in such pain. I worry about that being my situation as well, especially now that I've given into fighting for what the surgeon says would be the best surgery for my situation, and now have to ask him for alternate surgical solutions - a hybrid or double fusion instead of the bi-level ADR which the medical insurance refuses to pay for.

Oh well ... hope your condition improves! You hang in there too, huh? I'll try to post anything interesting which comes from this appt but I am not optimistic. Somehow I'm then leaving on a plane for Florida to attempt to walk Disneyworld with my family for 5 or six days! Lord help me!