Dad assures me that the hospital does not observe April Fool's day.

Early tomorrow morning, my Dad is going into the hospital for spinal surgery. As I understand it, he has bone spurs inside one of his vertebrae and that's causing constriction of the spinal cord/ nerves. This is the latest (and hopefully finally accurate) explanation for the chronic pain he's been feeling in his lower back and legs for, oh, months now. He hasn't been able to ski at all this season (most of you don't know Dad, so I'll just tell you, not skiing is a BIG DEAL), and even back when the weather was nicer he was already feeling poorly enough that he didn't do as much hiking or rowing (in that snazzy boat we made a while back), or riding his motorcycles as he normally would. There have been various diagnoses and treatments in the meantime but it would seem now those were only addressing the symptoms and doing nothing about the actual problem. So, hopefully they've got it now, and "carving out the pumpkin" will fix him back up again, and then I'll be the only one moving slowly and making multiple attempts at rising from the couch and groaning whenever I stand up from the table. Which reminds me about my birthday present, but that's a longer and unrelated story so I'll tell you about it later.

He's got four days of recovery in the hospital before one of us gets to take him home, then a couple weeks off work recovering at home, some physical therapy, and hopefully back to 100% in three months. Plenty of summertime left to fish from his rowboat.

Dad assures me that the hospital does not observe April Fool's day.

Early tomorrow morning, my Dad is going into the hospital for spinal surgery. As I understand it, he has bone spurs inside one of his vertebrae and that's causing constriction of the spinal cord/ nerves. This is the latest (and hopefully finally accurate) explanation for the chronic pain he's been feeling in his lower back and legs for, oh, months now. He hasn't been able to ski at all this season (most of you don't know Dad, so I'll just tell you, not skiing is a BIG DEAL), and even back when the weather was nicer he was already feeling poorly enough that he didn't do as much hiking or rowing (in that snazzy boat we made a while back), or riding his motorcycles as he normally would. There have been various diagnoses and treatments in the meantime but it would seem now those were only addressing the symptoms and doing nothing about the actual problem. So, hopefully they've got it now, and "carving out the pumpkin" will fix him back up again, and then I'll be the only one moving slowly and making multiple attempts at rising from the couch and groaning whenever I stand up from the table. Which reminds me about my birthday present, but that's a longer and unrelated story so I'll tell you about it later.

He's got four days of recovery in the hospital before one of us gets to take him home, then a couple weeks off work recovering at home, some physical therapy, and hopefully back to 100% in three months. Plenty of summertime left to fish from his rowboat.