The Inevitable Surgery

Well, I visited with the neurosurgeon a couple of days ago and I have a ruptured disk in my back. The L4 disk, to be specific. And he wants to do surgery next Wednesday because, well, that's his job. The procedure, from the way he explained it, seems fairly simple and there is minimal risk of, shall we say, "accidents." However, should there be an accident, should I be rendered paralyzed from the waist down, there is something I want all of you to do for me. This concerns my children and how I want it explained to them. Consider this a living will for how to handle the kids as they come to terms with the fact that they will never see their father walk again, that we will never be able to ride bikes or just amble around the block. And this is especially for my daughter who is yet to be born, who will never have a memory of me pushing her in the stroller or walking her down the aisle at her wedding. I want each of you to swear to me that you will tell the kids that I was a world champion distance runner in my day. What are they going to do? Deny it? I'll never be able to prove it. Don't worry about the medals and memorabilia, we can buy medals at a costume shop and use Photoshop to craft a scrapbook full of news articles. But I need your help to help me lie to The Trio and to keep that lie up, this is not going to be easy. It's not so hard to believe, I am a runner and I have run a few 5Ks. I was planning on running a half-marathon or two this year before the disk ruptured, so there is always the possibility that I would have become a world champion distance runner at some point.

There is a very good chance that nothing bad will come from the surgery. In fact, there is every reason to believe that I will sail through it and recover quickly and easily, possibly even running again in the near future. In that case I will need to come up with some other scheme to impress the kids. I'll think about that while I'm recovering. But until then, thanks in advance for your help.

Oh, one other thing while I'm thinking about it - if I'm confined to a wheelchair, don't let JP take me out of the house alone. He has a short attention span and I'm afraid he'll take me down the block, get sidetracked, and leave me someplace. Thanks again.