Alan - I don't find this at all boring. In fact, I'm incredibly interested and I'm sure many other are also. This happened to you quite a long time ago and many of us are relative newcomers. I realize from hunting through some of your posts from several years ago, that you probably provided lots of helpful detail at the time. However, it's quite difficult to search through many hundreds of pages of posts looking for this stuff.

Personally, I would be extremely pleased to have the opportunity to learn more about what happened to you and how you managed to deal with it, both before and after surgery. The photos on line are amazing and give a powerful sense of what was involved.

If at any point you are in the mood to start a post specifically about the any details of the surgery and pre and post issues that you coped with, I would be very interested to read. Of course, this is asking a lot and you may not want to be bothered or not have the time to respond to such a request. I wonder how easy it is in KickAS to provide links to such posts from the past.

Anyway, mostly what I wanted to say is that "usually bore folks to death" does not apply to me. I am interested and very grateful to you for your willingness to share. Although I don't have AS, I am aware that, with RA, I am facing the risk of seriously deformed joints and/or joint replacements in the future. The spinal surgery sounds much more scary than, say, a hip replacement but still there is something about reading and absorbing this kind of information that makes it less terrifying to me - a kind of normalizing that happens as you learn how people cope and what is involved.

Long-winded way of saying "thanks - I appreciate your sharing and would be happy to learn more".

Wendy

Rheumatoid Arthritis
Methotrexate, Celebrex, Plaquenil