My Boyfiend's Back.

I go back to work tomorrow after ten days off. Why, you ask, did I take ten days off in the middle of what is decidedly not vacation season?

My boyfiend's back.

Specifically, his two-level microdiscectomy and associated recovery time.

Boyfiend had worked really hard all late summer and early fall, getting the brewery where he works up and running (yes, Boyfiend makes beer for a living. It's a perfect match.) and had started, just before Thanksgiving, having some pain in his knee. He'd messed up the knee years ago in a bike accident (yes, he rides bikes. Yes, he has a fixie. Yes, he has a beard and skinny jeans and flannel shirts.) and we'd thought it was just overwork. . .

. . . until the day that that leg was so numb he nearly fell getting out of bed.

I'll spare you the fun and games involved with the diagnosis of his problem, except to say that about six weeks into it, I said, "Honey-Bun, Snoogums, Sweetie-Pie, this shit is for the birds. I've got you an appointment with a neurosurgeon at Sunnydale General."

Whereupon he had a myelogram and various other things done that made the surgeon say OMG WTF, and then he went into surgery, where the surgeon opened him up and said OMG WTF EVEN WORSE THAN I THOUGHT OH NOOOOEEEES, and then the surgeon fixed him and closed him up and he's been pretty much fine.

I told him before surgery that he'd take less pain medication recovering from the surgery than he did prior. He did not believe me. I was right.

So for ten days I've been on light nursing duty. Boyfiend is not a whiner, he doesn't moan for attention, and he doesn't get in the way. Mostly he's been sleeping and reading and eating entire pints of ice cream late at night.

Monday he'll get his staples out. Then he can begin, very carefully, to be slightly more active. It'll be months before he's allowed to throw kegs around like Hulk Brewer again (if ever he can), but at least he'll be further away from surgery.

I have to say: it's been nice, after years and years of taking care of back-surgery patients, to get to see one get better.

Hey la, hey la.