Dark day.  Deb just now got off the phone with her pain-management doctor and called me.

Because of the surgery not being indicated, because she's got numbness in her legs, because she has to have prescription narcotics in her system to blunt the pain she experiences (lower back) enough to function, her doctor says she should not be driving, and he will support her application for Social Security Disability.

Swearing isn't appropriate -- as she says, it beats having your obituary in the newspaper.  But we're going to have to adjust our thinking from "this is an episode and it'll go away" to "it's going to be like this from here on, so get used to it."  An August trip up to see relatives in Boston for a week is probably not on -- we'll have to discuss it.