My boyfriend's back

Ha ha, i'm not talking about the song. i'm referring to his back problem.

He has a disk that is basically worn out, causing him a ton of pain. He is on workman's comp, and saw the surgeon yesterday, who is suggesting surgery. Now, I worked on an ortho/neurosurgery floor years ago, so I'm a bit rusty in that department. I didn't go with him to the doc. I asked him twhat he wants to do, and suggested a couple of terms. he said 'diskectomy sounds familiar'. He mentioned replacing his disk with a cadaver disk.

Now here's the thing: we have been dating for almost 4 months. From the beginning, I have tried not to be all nursey about this with him. I never really told him what I thought he should do. But my thought is that he can't be on dilaudid for the rest of his life (he's 32). And he needs to go back to work. he is a mechanic by trade, and he will be severely limited to what he can do (can't stand for long periods, can't sit for long periods, can't walk long distances, etc). People (lay people) are telling him "you don't want to have surgery". A month ago, he was convinced that he didn't want to do it, because people told him he'd be worse off. I tried to explain the theroy of customer satisfaction to him, that more people share bad stories than good ones. However, i did not go crazy convincing him to do it. We are not at that point in the relationship, and he is a big boy.

So now, he is waiting for comp to approve the surgery, and when we were talking about it, he seemed a bit nervous. The problem is, so did I. I have gone from being the nurse to being the nervous girlfriend. If he gets it done, it will be at the hosp. where I work per-diem. He was asking me typical pre-op/post-op questions.

I've never been in this situation before, having a loved one in the hospital while i was a nurse. Any advice? Any advice on the whole diskectomy thing?