October 20

Tomorrow I head to The Hospital for Special Surgery for my third back surgery... 

  I have all the confidence that this will be the easiest and smoothest of back surgeries I've been through.  (Though these drawings imply upper back issues, it's all lower - artistic license!)  Less than a year ago, I had a lumbar fusion, after an unsuccessful partial discectomy from two years prior to that.  Now, I have to have the screws and rod used to support my spine while the fusion healed, taken out.  Normally it is left in, but my body still has not accepted this foreign material, and may have even developed an allergy to the titanium it is made up of - which is rare, but not unheard of.

The journey of my back began after a fall, while I was trying to stop my dog from falling down the stairs... She had a brain tumor, and was unsteady on her feet. Well, I succeeded at keeping her from tumbling, by taking her place!  I know, it sounds like something I couldn't make up - add that her name was Frida... (as in Khalo.  Yeah, I'll be picking my pet names way more carefully in the future!) but that's what happened.

My Sweet Frida

Anyway, I can hardly wait for this to all be healed so that I can sit and create comfortably, take walks, do yoga again, and not have my back be the first thing I am aware of in the morning, and the last thing I feel as I try to go to sleep.  

I've pre-prepared a few posts for you and will have them come up while I'm in the hospital, including a slide movie tour of my studio and the process I go through, from beginning to end, with my pages in a day.   That's slotted for tomorrow!  (How cool that we can pre-post and it will pop up when the date and time is set for?!)

Please think of me tomorrow, as you go through your day, and send healing thoughts. 

(My surgery is scheduled for 3:30 PM New York time!)

Thank you, Karin

By the way, these mandalas are taken from a mandala journal I kept a few years ago.  Too much on my plate for my journal today - I'm already going through withdrawal!