I'm new here and thought I would introduce myself and ask for some suggestions on what to bring to the hospital and what's helped those of you who have been through surgery be more comfortable :-)

Firstly, in the grand scheme of things, my journey will be short compared to many of you, but due to my rapidly deteriorating symptoms, I'm considered an emergency so surgery is being fast tracked.

My journey starts the beginning of March 2017. I started having sever pain on my right side where my back meets my hip. The pain was so bad I couldn't sit, stand, sleep...I couldn't really do anything. So I ended up in the e.r and over the course of 2 weeks it was discovered I had a large ovarian cyst that ruptured and a kidney stone at the same time. At the end of March when my pain wasn't getting any better and none of the pain medication was doing anything for me, my family Dr figured something else was going on as the ruptured ovarian cyst had been absorbed and the kidney stone had passed (within days of each other). So she sent me for xrays where there was an abnormality on my Iliac bone with fluid around it.

The next business day I was having an MRI where it was discovered I had a 2.5cm herniated disc of my L5 S1 with a lesion and an 8mm cyst in my right hip.

Since this I've experienced drop foot in both my right and left feet (though my worst and most frequent symptoms are on my right side), lost feeling to half of my right foot for almost 2 months now and find it very difficult to walk. 3 weeks later I had an emergency MRI as I was unable to urinate and they thought I might need emergency surgery. MRI showed the herniation was now 3cm in size and pushing 1/3 of the way into the nerves in my back but they suspected a bladder infection was the reason for the incontinence. So I went on 3 different antibiotics over the course of 2 weeks even though after the first week tests showed any infection was gone, they gave me antibiotics anyway as I was still having difficulty starting and maintaining a stream when urinating. I had another emergency MRI 2 weeks ago as once again they thought I might need emergency surgery. Turns out I'm now classified as an emergency, but not emergency enough to be operated on through the e.r.

Now my herniation is well over 3cm in size and pushing over 50% of the way into the nerves in my back. My surgeon has scheduled surgery for about a week and a half from today. I'll be having the disc shaved down, titanium spacer between my vertabrea and 2 vertabrea fused with 4 screws. Approx 3 days in hospital with 3-4 weeks on heavy pain meds where I won't be able to drive and a total of approx 3 months before getting back to normal.

All in all I'm super relieved to start the healing process and understand it will be a long road. I already have (and am using a walker), have a cane (for during recovery when I start walking better), a shower chair, shower handle, body pillow, hot water bottle, electric heat pad, "Back on Track" Back brace, back scratcher and grabber to reach things on the ground I cant...just wondering if there's anything else anyone found helpful either while you're in hospital or at home recovering? This will be my first major surgery (only ever had my tonsils removed as a kid)