well, what's new?

i have made my mind up with surgery. i have a consultation with a surgeon on August 1st, and I will schedule a surgery as soon as possible after that. but, since that is around 2 months from now i still have a lot of time to see if i can recover on my own. i am still making significant progress but the reason for my decision is this over the weekend, i was basically one of the 5 subjects for the herniated disc treatment class for physical therapy. i saw him twice, and with his help, i made some really amazing progress in the last 2 days, but it was also his opinion that my condition is on the severity range that physical therapy has a low probability of fixing. but he also assured me that even though my symptoms are severe, it is very common and recommended surgery, but also said there is no reason i should stop physical therapy. so that's the latest news. the most significant thing is that i can walk with almost no pain in my calf now and that is pretty amazing. so until then, i will continue with physical therapy, but as the day nears and I am still unsure if I'll ever get better without surgery, then I'll go ahead with it.



i have also decided that i want to go to europe and do a similar tour that Diem did. sounds like the tour has many advantages over backpacking. and is not costly either. probably not a 36 day tour...probably something around 2 weeks. this means that after some celebrating, I will save money to pay off my credit cards, and hopefully have some money to go to europe. maybe i can get some people together. you only live once right? might as well do it when I still can.



other than that, nothing much has happened. been watching a few movies a day. just saw "bowling for columbine" and was pleasantly surprised. finished harry potter 3 finally, started book 4, and hopefull i can move to book 5 in about a week.