Scared shitless of having suggested surgery. I'm up at night with pain and tossing around the thought of going under the knife. Is my pain at the level of going ahead with the surgery? Can I continue to deal with this pain for the rest of my life? Is it worth the risk of surgery? Will there be complications? No guarantee can be given for a complete success so pain may still be there after surgery so do I take the gamble?
This is literally what brought me to RC. I suffer from a failed spinal fusion surgery that left me disabled. Screws, rods, titanium spacer resting on cadaver bone but my vertebrae didn't fuse and heal into a solid mass. My bones still shift, rub and grind together and irritate the nerves. Before the surgery I suffered from back pain caused by years of motorcycles both on and off road, riding a desk in my engineering office and gritting and grunting my way through everything I could to out-do those other guys who wouldn't/couldn't do. No log splitter for me, I did it all by maul and wedges. Not arrogant, just took pride in having the grit to do harder things. I didn't have as much money as other people but I could at least be tougher and grittier than other people.
So now I'm in constant, chronic pain and spend most of my time sitting sideways on my couch with my legs elevated. I walk with a cane outside my house when there's nothing nearby to touch for stability. Using a cane makes one effectively one-handed, which sucks more than you know. When I stand or walk by spine feels compressed, one leg burns from nerve damage and the other goes pins/needles and charlie horse. It only gets worse until I get back down and rest. I'm on prescription pain medication all the time, but no opiates so don't worry.
Pretty cool that you did the research and put that video together. If it's OK with you, I'm going to copy that video link and show it to people so they can see what I'm living.
So anyway - I still own the motorcycle and it scares that crap out of my family that I get back on it. This is a potentially safer hobby.
I can't climb rocks or walk trails with the transmitter in my hand so it's been kind of frustrating not being able to replicate those cool videos on Youtube, or even sit at a desk building a kit (I've been buying RTRs and tinkering with them in small ways).
It's still cool though. The capability of the cars now is amazing. Mine are obviously lightly used but half this game is imagining and building them to extreme capability anyway right.
. Having a bunch of plastic/rubber/metal pieces in front of you; building/connecting those pieces, and seeing it in motion must have been so satisficing. Decades later I'm still doing it 
... still playing in the dirt at recess.
