Success is only what you put into it. The harder you work for something, the better the success will be. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. I Googled “stupid quotes about hard work and motivation.” How pithy are these quotes? How out of touch with reality are they? My reality, anyway. I think about quotes like this often, especially now, because I thought I was done with this blog. I thought it had taught me all I needed to know. Except… I had another MRI that shows degeneration above and below my two fusions, which explains the pain down my arms and up into my head that grows with intensity every day. Breakdown isn’t supposed to happen after a fusion for at least 10 years. My surgeon said that, unfortunately, I have “bad connective tissue.” Yay. This could lead to what is called the “ladder effect,” which is when you have fusion after fusion, laddering up and down the spine until there …