Some notes on initial recovery and post-op tests.

I was in rather little pain, and morphine was used for about
the first 36 hours only.  Steroids were also started to counteract the
inflammation; I am to be weaned from these over the next two weeks.

The initial recovery was apparently meteoric.  I don't have the
exact quotes but Mark Bilsky noted that it was almost as though I was
born to have this type of surgery and Dennis Kraus said it was the
"surgical case of the month ... plus" and that I made a difficult
surgery look easy.  It will be important for me to remember to not
push recovery too hard!

Lingering effects: 
	(i) swallowing is an initial problem.  The right
vocal nerve has been irritated and will take a while to recover.  This
gets sufficiently better after three days that I am deemed in no real
danger of choking, although I do have to be a good masticator ... hard
to do in the cervical collar I have to wear 24/7 for many weeks.
	(ii) tingling continues.   While the burning and aching pain 
have gone away, the tingling caused by nerve root compression is,
if anything, initially worse from pre-op.  This is because these nerves
were pressed on to clean them of tumor.  The should improve with time,
although it will be a race between the reduction in steroids and
the lessening of the nerve inflammation.
	(iii) fuzziness.  No surprise here!
	Otherwise, quite miraculously, I seem intact.

Post-op tests:
	The X-ray of the cervical spine looks fine ...all the screws
look in place.
	More important is the post-op MRI which is to be compared
to the pre-op one from which the surgical plan was based.  There are
NO hot spots consistent with tumor, and only one small spot more
consistent with a stray ganglion.