@red3 Thanks for the nod, Ruth Ann. It sounds like you have found your path and are taking charge of your future. This is a very big decision, and all the things you are doing to learn all you can will surely help. I know for me, I needed to understand in detail what the surgeon can do, and also what I can do that will help achieve success. That is a good way to overcome the stress, and gratitude will also help you overcome the fear. It helps you find your way from the fears of an unknown, and then to find a plan for your future and the doctor who can give you that. It is a team effort, and I viewed my own situation as being a part of my surgeon's team to solve a medical problem. That gives you some sense of control and a positive outlook. Recovery and rehab will be part of this, and believing in a positive outcome and a successful procedure will help you recover. Make sure your surgeon knows how much you appreciate their help. They can have very stressful jobs, and the same other life stresses that anyone can have. Expressing gratitude to your surgeon will help them focus on you and getting everything right. Right before I went into surgery, I held my surgeon's hand and thanked him for helping me, and reminded him that we had agreed on no hardware for my single level fusion. That would be an easy thing to miss if most of his cases involved hardware. Making that effort on my part gave us both peace of mind and I could relax knowing that I was in good hands. You need to have that level of trust when you are the patient on the table.