I just spoke with John's wife, she said that the last update she's received was at 7:45pm today. The surgery started late by about two hours (11am) and they're expecting that at 12am tonight she'll have another update. However, as I was on the phone with her, she was paged...maybe by the hospital.
The update she received was that the spinal orthopedic specialist was with John from 4-5 hours at which point the nuerologists took over. There was apparently an issue at that point which necessitated the cardio thoracic guys to take over for a bit. This isn't a good thing, but it may just have been to look at his condition or to see that his anesthesia was ok....I'm speculating here though. All I know is that they weren't supposed to be needed. They also finished up with operating from the back and have flipped him and are now operating from the front. I think this means that the vertebrae and ribs have been cut and the final frontal cuts are coming soon. Then they'll pull some bone off of his hips to use for the bone graft. Apparently they took bone from both the disk above AND below the "infected" disk, so they'll be replacing that as well as adding the prosthetic disk, or whatever its called.
Anyway, Jane is doing very well, she sounded like John last night on the phone, except that she was worried about the cardio guys coming in. Its significant enough that they called her to tell her about it....but with no further details.
I'd volunteer her number, but I think one of us calling for updates is enough to drive her crazy. She seems very edgy with calls and pages, so I think its better to leave her alone. She seems very strong, I guess she'd have to be while married to John!