Prayer rising for you, Scottly! My father-in-law went thru something VERY similar, and after they were done with him he lived 24 more years, splitting up to 6 cords of wood to heat his mountain home every year until he passed 80. Then he just bought it split already...
I thought my life was over in 2016. My left leg was down to 15% strength and failing fast, I figured I would be wheelchaired by that Fall. I had opportunity to go see someone about it (because Medicare actually covered it, while Obamacare would not) in August that year: I had so many MRIs and Xrays to show them that it took a briefcase just to carry them with me. All they could see was a white lump, as my back was broken when I was just 6 years old. Purely by chance (if God even allows that...) I drew the Director of Spinal Surgery as my doctor, in the Anschutz Spinal Center here in Colorado, as the doctor. After a very long visit (and more useless Xrays, digital this time), I asked him if he would be willing to just go in, do whatever he could, and I promised I would not hold him to account, as I was 100% sure I was about to be done. To my surprise, he agreed(!) and we set a surgery date.
I wondered, going under, if my slow and painful walk to the prep room would be my last time on my own two feet, but hey- you only get one chance at this life, right? I had told the doc I would bring my favorite Dremel porting bits if he wanted to grind away some broken parts: he said the ones in the operating room were already made by Dremel, but are all stainless steel, so he thought those might be better (and were smaller in size). So, I went under in [the usual] enormous back pain, but woke up (10 hours later) in the dark, not feeling too bad! As it turned out, he went in with the thought of a 30-60 minute surgery to 'alleviate stress points' and discovered massive stenosis and [fragile] bone flares that had grown all around the broken bone, which were locking all the lower bones (L3-4-5 and S1) with bone-to-bone contact (the constant pain) and were pinching off all the nerves to both legs. He spent over 3.5 hours grinding away with the Dremel, but forgot to save me the little bits he used (which he had promised me, dang...).
So, I got a port job in my back! I actually got up and walked out of the hospital at noon the next day, drove myself home, and about an hour later discovered that I felt pretty good because: he had laid in 24 hours' worth of [some narcotic or other] that wore off all at once at 3 PM that day. THEN I was not a happy camper, for about 5 days...
But now - I am in better shape, spirits, less pain and more flexible than I have been since the 1980s! So I might be old enough to speak like a grandpa, but it ain't happenin' that way: I am now living the 40s that I never got to have because I was so immobilized by pain and pain killers all those years!
Life begins right here, right now.
