[Terry Allen Blackburn]

I am the worst example to follow but, sometimes necessity dictates our actions. We live in Northern Michigan and my wife is not a good driver in the Wintertime. Even though I love her, she has bashed more cars than you can possibly believe. In order to keep her safe, along with other people on the road, I drive her all Winter long to wherever she needs to go. I had the 4 level ADR surgery on November 4th, returned home on November 17th, drove her to work on November 18th. I continued to drive thereafter. In mid-December, a little over a month out of surgery, I drove us 10.5 hours home for Christmas. I drove her Mother everywhere, for the holiday shopping, for the next two weeks, then drove home 10.5 hours on Christmas Day so that we could open our store for the day after Christmas sale. I then went to work at exactly two months to the day from my surgery. I believe it is best to wait due to the safety issue of having someone rear-end you after such a major surgery. It could cause extreme harm from the force of the impact. Like I said, I am a lousy example. I was also on 10 - 20 mg. of Methadone for pain management which is a small dose. I did not require more than that for pain management other than the large doses of Lyrica that I was on.

Terry Newton