@bkandrew Thanks for the kind words.

The metastasis was at T3 and starting to spread to T2 and T4, so they added screws from T1 to T5 to ensure that my spine didn't collapse in the future, in addition to the cement to fill in all the gaps.

The fortunate (?) part is that I didn't have much time to worry. I was wheeled to the operating room just a few hours after I realised I couldn't move my legs — they called their star orthopedic surgeon in from home in the middle of the night — then I was unconscious for about half a day, so I didn't have to sweat it out like my family did waiting for news.

I know now that there was a non-trivial chance I could have died on the operating table, but there just wasn't time to think when it was happening. They would have operated immediately, but there was someone in even worse shape than me (a car crash victim, I'd guess), so I was bumped to second in the triage line for ortho surgery.