Dear Mr.Phil,

it is so good to see you back at the helm and we are thrilled with 
your progress and how Mr.God saw you thru the surgery and has blessed 
you. Our God is so awesome and so good!

WE pray that you will continue to heal and improve as you have been 
and that you stick with your Physical Therapy and recover completely 
really soon. It is amazing what medical science can do today but we 
know that it is our God who guides the doctor's hands and gives us 
the knowledge in the first place.

Take care and God Bless,

Doris

At 05:02 PM 1/26/2009 -0700, you wrote:
>Hello everybody.  Today I went to the doctor a little over a week after
>spinal surgery.  He took out the 15 staples in the back of my neck and the
>neck brace I have been wearing for nearly three weeks, he removed.  He had
>originally said I would wear the neck brace for another 6 weeks 24 hours a
>day.  The day before Christmas, I went shopping with my daughter.  A day or
>two after Christmas, I could not walk without assistance and I could not
>feels the keys on the keyboard nor could I read or write Braille.  Yes, I
>was freaked out.  I truly felt I was going home to be with the Lord as my
>body slowly weakened day by day.  The spinal surgery, after the MRI revealed
>the problem, was all in my neck both front and back.  My throat was opened
>in the front to put in a titanium plate to fuse two vertebra together.  Then
>I was turned over and the back of my neck opened to remove a disk and to
>replace it with synthetic bone mass in order to relieve excessive spinal
>compression on my spine.  I have a long 6 inch incision running down the
>back of my head and down my neck.  No, it doesn't hurt.  In fact, other than
>normal post surgical incisional discomfort, I have had no pain of any kind
>in my body.  I also have an incision in the right front of my neck where
>they made entrance in order to put the plate in place.  No, I cannot feel
>the plate but the incision is still puffy and sticks out from my neck.  The
>grandchildren think it is cool.  I am walking with the walker but I am
>almost learning to walk all over again so I am sort of slow.  Before
>surgery, my upper torso felt as if it were balanced on a one legged stool.
>In other words, I felt off balance and felt as if I would fall at any
>second.  I did fall a couple of times before I finally went to the emergency
>room and was admitted to the hospital.  Now my spine feels like it is
>perfectly centered and balanced and I have no fear of falling but walking is
>still slow.  I also am having physical therapy.  My hands are slowly
>returning to normal but are tingly and somewhat numb but at least, though my
>typing is slower now, I can feel the keys and I can read Braille a little
>now, too.  I will write more later but to say the least, I was more
>frightened than at any time of my life.  It was not anxiety type fear,
>however, but just the fear of not knowing what was wrong.  No, I was not
>injured prior to surgery but the doctor said it was a degenerative thing
>occurring over the last year and a half that finally got to the serious
>stage of development.  Thank you very much for all your prayers and continue
>to pray my hands return to normal.  I think it was the inability to use my
>hands normally and to touch things with my fingers that was the most
>frightening to me.  By the way, all my lower back pain and problems are
>completely gone.  The doc said today that he believed it would take longer
>for my hands to recover.  Yes, I learned some spiritual things and have an
>idea I will be learning more as times passes.  I will share those things
>soon but I just want to write and thank you guys for praying for me.  This
>was very hard on all my family, too.  The surgery was scheduled for 7 hours
>but turned out to be about five because everything went so well.
>
>Phil.