looking up

I’ve been spending a lot of time on my back looking at the ceiling. Which is making my neck hurt — and yes I have a tempurpedic pillow. I’m all achy like a 90 year old. So I sit at the edge of the bed for as long as my sciatica will allow and stare into a mirror repeating: you will be fine, you will be fine. you will be fine, you will be fine. you will be fine. you will be fine. you will be fine. you will be fine. you will be fine. you will be fine. you will be fine. you will be fine. you will be fine. you will be fine. you will be fine. you will be fine. you will be fine. you will be fine. you will be fine. you will be fine. you will be fine…
I have other mantras as well, but that’s the one I like best for blocking out the recurring nightmare scenarios I’ve been playing out. It is also what I go to whenever I get the impulse to google something like "recurrent microdiscectomy success rates" or any of the other phrases I’ve learned the past couple of weeks.
Here’s what I know. First time around I felt better so I lived my life as normal. There were at least a dozen things that could have caused me to reherniate — my number one suspect is sneezing and coughing from the cold, but I’m not sure it wasn’t something else. The scar tissue on the disc takes four months to form. I need to be incredibly careful for the next six months (just to be sure). After that good back safety is the norm for the rest of my life. 
Last night was bad. I had about 2 hours of sleep — maybe a little more — tossing and turning, feeling wave after wave of anxiety. So I put on the Jack Kornfield recordings and listened to them with my headphones — soft enough so I could fall asleep but loud enough so I could hear his voice instead of my crazy. Jack has the most soothing voice. Your Buddha Nature is his best audio series. It’s nine hours long — so it can run all night — especially when you’re having a dark night of the soul.
I got up and taught the worst class of my life today. Did thirty minutes of script review and then I was out of there. I felt like I was losing my mind. I came home, did some scream crying. I composed a crazy email to my doctor (he’s not responded — which is understandable). Then I crawled into bed. D’s friend Jen came over and she helped him clean the turtle tank, took the dog for a walk and helped him clean the floor heater (the dog, now in the adult diapers phase of life) peed into the heater and made it literally unusable. However, I cannot be shivering in this house trying to recover from a delicate spine operation. They managed to clean it pretty good, and the rest of that pee smell should burn off tonight. We’ll leave the windows open and the heat running and that should do the trick (along with some baking soda).
I’m just trying to do my best to get through this and not tear myself up with crazy predictions of worse case scenarios. And who knows, maybe, just maybe some kind of miracle will happen and I won’t need the surgery.