i'm alive!

So my surgery was a week ago today! As I mentioned before, I had surgery on my spine to hopefully decrease the amount of pain I'm having due to scoliosis and a generally pretty messed up back. I was able to find two amazing doctors who were confident that they could help me by doing a spinal fusion.

I was presented with two options: an XLIF procedure, and a normal spinal fusion.

There was a pretty significant chance that for a few reasons, my doctors would be unable to perform the XLIF. They wouldn't know if they could do it until they started surgery...luckily, they were able to!

A more minimally invasive procedure is obviously preferred, so I was really happy that they could do the surgery this way. I'm in a lot of pain, though, and can't even imagine what my recovery would be like if I had a regular surgery - so I'm counting my blessings!

I'm not able to lift anything heavier than five pounds, or bend, or twist. Which means I'm pretty useless. I'm also super bored. Hopefully as I feel better, I'll find more stuff to keep me busy that doesn't involve a lot of moving around...I'm going to go crazy!

Mike has been working from home to take care of me, and so since I was feeling a little better today, I made us breakfast this morning. Last week, my mom brought us approximately 300 pounds of food from an amazing Italian deli - we had some yummy leftover ham and a lot of arugula, so I made a frittata. It was tasty! Easy, too...I wasn't exactly up for anything super intense :)

Arugula & Ham Frittata (you could put pretty much anything in this, though)

6 eggs (I used 5 egg whites and 1 whole egg)

2 tablespoons milk

1 garlic clove

1 tablespoon olive oil

3 cups arugula (or spinach, or anything else you have on hand)

1/2 cup chopped ham (I think prosciutto would be amazing in this, or smoked salmon!)

1/2 teaspoon herbes de provence

salt & pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and spray a pie plate with non-stick spray.

2. Chop the garlic and saute in olive oil over medium heat for about a minute, then add arugula and saute until wilted. Set aside.

3. Combine the eggs, milk, ham, salt, pepper, herbes de provence, and the arugula. Pour into pie plate.

4. Bake for 25-30 minutes.