Habit-forming

LISTEN. The pre-op consultation was quite involved, in two different locations (three actually, but the first was wrong), and multiple consultants issuing instructions, drawing blood, asking questions about my remote medical history etc. Looks like I'm good to go for Tuesday morning, and then stage two on Wednesday if all has gone according to plan. Oh boy. 

The procedure itself is called Oblique Lumbar Interbody Fusion (OLIF), a name I'm recalling only because I've formed mnemonic triggers involving the Beatles' (Ob-La-Di etc.) and the Pythons' Lumberjack Song. I'm trying hard not to think about it, "non-invasive" though they assure me it (comparatively) is, and instead to imagine how wonderful it will eventually be to walk the dogs for half an hour without having to expand and occupy my collapsible stool every few minutes.

Before that happy result can eventuate, though, I must endure six weeks in the heart of Tennessee summer not going for sweaty daily bikerides and then cooling down in our backyard redneck pool. That's been my delight for several years. My post-operative instructions are to strap on the restrictive back-brace (thankfully not the primitive girdle my father had to sport after his much more invasive back surgery in the '60s) and limit my mobility to a few minutes at a stretch. And pop a Percocet if I have to.

And: lay off the blood-thinning bourbon and beer now, and later when relying on pain meds. That's more of a challenge than it should be, so I'm turning once again to William James's most sage advice on breaking bad old habits and replacing them with good ones.

Any sequence of mental action which has been frequently repeated tends to perpetuate itself; so that we find ourselves automatically prompted to think, feel, or do what we have been before accustomed to think, feel, or do, under like circumstances, without any consciously formed purpose, or anticipation of results. PP I, ch 4

Right. My habitual bump-and-a-beer has indeed been frequently repeated, and has thus become self-perpetuating and automatic. It's time to be a lot more conscious and deliberate in anticipation of the  desired happy results of OLIF. 

Yesterday went well in that regard, with some promising new habits now under construction: I'll be listening to more music (and newly appreciating those noise-canceling earbuds I received for Christmas), intermittently and more frequently pedaling the stationary bike and pumping free weights (appropriately lightened, post-op), popping more corn, downing more herbal liquids... and probably writing about it. Memos to self can also be a great form of positive reinforcement. "The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy..."

And so, I'll frequently review James's maxim: "put yourself assiduously in conditions that encourage the new way; make engagements incompatible with the old; take a public pledge..."

I pledge allegiance. Thanks, Will.