Better late than Never ?

The summer is over and I haven't done much of anything this year. Oh, I went cod jigging for a little while and enjoyed it, however, I wasn't able to really work. It is amazing what a simple act, like a tree falling over can do to your life. I guess I have to tell the whole story, so that it makes sense.  I was driving home one evening during a local windstorm, which we have all the time, when a big old dead tree fell on the truck I was driving. I went from about 35 mph to 0 mph, was thrown clear up completely off the road and dumped in a ditch.  I woke up laying on a stretcher with a young paramedic telling me I was the luckiest guy on the face of the earth. A trip to the emergency room, cat scans, MRI's,and a bunch of X rays.  They said they couldn't see any thing, so I was sent home to recover. Little by little, my back started to feel different.  I'd go numb in the left foot, then it would feel like someone had stuck a needle all the way down the leg.  Then my back started to hurt all the time.
Off to see a specialist, who had an MRI with dye done and showed me the results.  See right here Mr. Mann, your disc is torn and leaking.  I don't know how they didn't see this in the emergency room.  You have very few options at this point. You can do nothing and hope it heals on its own or you can operate and cut off the torn tissue and seal the disc.  Well, they ended up having to do that operation twice in two years.  I never did recover to the point where I felt I could really do my job, so I let the little maintenance things wait. Sanding , painting, that kind of stuff.  The engineering maintenance had to be done, but it took a long time with long breaks in between projects to let the back settle down. Well now we're at the end of the narrative.  I have just had spinal fusion, because there was no disc left between the vertebrae.  At this point the prognosis looks hopeful. If everything heals as it should and I'm able to rehab once the bone has set up.  I might just be able to fish again next year.  Any way, that's why I haven't been very good at keeping up with events.  I'll try to do better as time progresses.  Man, I am so lucky. That stupid tree would have killed me, had I been going 1/2 a mile an hour slower!