Goodwill Treasure and another spinal fusion?

Little Ms. Peytiecakes had a Dr. appointment this morning before school. Of course I had to bribe her with the ever popular McDonalds cinnamelts and a chocolate milk. It's completely Ronald McDonald's fault that we eat at McD's. His happy cheerful face totally suckers us in to believing that those cinnamelts will be WAY more healthy than the icing-laden toaster strudel that she typically has at home. WITH ORANGE JUICE, I might add. (Did you all see the news about the group trying to get McD's to remove Ronald because he lures kids into thinking they are making healthy choices?) Frankly, the poor redheaded afro sporting fellow isn't on a whole lotta merchandise that I see. Although he WAS on the chocolate milk this morning. Personally, I don't see anything wrong with milk. Or chocolate...it has some antioxidants or something, right? ;-)

SO anyway, after P got dropped off to school I swung by a Goodwill near her school that just opened TODAY to drop off some things Matt doesn't wear anymore...mainly tie's that his classes had given him over the years...zoo animals and brilliant blue with panda's just isn't cutting the dress code over at the office anymore. Being the good shopper that I am, I couldn't NOT stop in the store after I contributed. Low and BEHOLD, my pretty footed milk glass compote/vase or something or other. I think it's LOVELY. It will be so pretty to hold silver ware at an impromtu lunch. I'd have to give it to my sister if it was hobnail. Thank goodness it wasn't! I'm sharing it with Melissa's Thursdays Treasures and Trinkets over at MY COTTAGE CHARM

If you are interested in my back issues, (HEY WHO COULDN'T be interested in my SPINAL wonkieness~ total sarcasm if you didn't know folks!), I'll edit this post in a bit and let you know what might be happening in the next month or so. If you ever wonder why I post this wonkified spine stuff on here, the two most popular searches for my blog are BLACK PAINTED KITCHEN CABINETS and SPINE SURGERIES. Weird combo, huh?

EDIT:  If you're interested in hearing about my spinal issues, read on...if not, you can stop now and look at some exciting blog with a cool give away http://www.dreamywhites.blogspot.com/

As you may remember, my pain doctor feels that "this is as about as good as it's going to get".  He thinks that most surgeons won't really want to operate because of several factors, ie: age, prevelance of scar tissue etc, accelerated rate of degeneration, etc.  My family thought I should have a second opinion from another surgeon just to double check.  This time I tried a orthopedic surgeon even though my neuro surgeon had said something to the effect, having an ortho work on your spine is like having a handy man build you a custom home.  The past two weeks, I've seen the Ortho Dr. assistant and also had an MRI.  The assistant Dr. decided that it would be a good idea for the surgeon to look at my case.  Because the pain I'm in is over 95% in my lumbar BELOW my prior fusion and in the top of my butt, the success rate is approximately 50/50.  I'll know more about that when I see the surgeon next week.  Apparently, if they decide to do it (and I DECIDE to do it) then they'd go back in, remove my 11 month old hardware (instrumentation) that is at L3-4, leave in the artificial disc, give me another artificial disc or two between the vertebre's below (I already have a broad based disc bulge there anyway with some narrowing) and then re-fuse me from L3-4 through L5-S1.  The only disc that looks okay is the one at S1.  I'm really in a quandry...do I go through with this knowing that if it doesn't work, I'm just back where I am (minus the summer for the recup time) or I could be in a lot LESS pain.  I'm typically not a gambler but I'm just about desperate enough to go for those odds.  I'm really curious to see what the surgeon says on Tuesday! ;-)