Spinal Stenosis

I got an email from my mom yesterday.  She's going to have to go in for surgery on her lower back.  Ever since they yanked Vioxx off the market, her arthritis has been so bad that she can't get up and walk for more than 15 minutes at a time.  It hasn't helped that when she started taking Vioxx, she gained like 30 pounds.  The extra weight is the opposite of what her lower back wanted.

Anyways, so her specialist says she has a slowly degenerative condition called spinal stenosis.  One of the vertebrae in her lower back has shifted out of alignment with the one above and below it, causing the spinal cord to be squeezed and nerves to be pinched.  Ouch.

They give the surgury a 65% chance of improving her condition and a high probability of slowing further deterioration.  Since those odds don't make me really desperate for prayer, I've decided to pray for not just a successful surgery, but for a textbook case of complete recovery and regeneration.  Please join me in praying for my mom.  She is such a lively woman, just like her mother and father before her.  It's painful for me to see her pinned to a chair all the time.