What's it like to have back surgery?

First, a little history.  As a child, I stood with a swayed back.  As I got older, my parents would make me stand against the pantry door and make me push the small of my back against the pantry, to show me how I should be standing.  It was humiliating, but for what it's worth, they didn't know that my spinal cord wasn't built quite right.  About 14 years ago, when I had a sudden onset of pain in my hip, I had some physical therapy.  It didn't help.  Then I had an x-ray and I was told I had level 1 spondylolisthesis. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spondylolisthesis. )That means that my L5-S1 joint is malformed, genetically. The union of the two vertebra were squeezing my sciatic nerve.  I went to a couple sessions at a chiropractor's, but I didn't feel comfortable with him cracking my back, and it didn't help with the pain.   Around the same time I went on a gluten-free diet, and because of the lack of gluten-free foods at the time, I lost 25 pounds.  And the pain in my hip disappeared.  But I felt like the shape of my back had changed during that next year, so I had another x-ray.  The doctor referred me to a neurosurgeon, who informed me that I was now a grade 2/3 (out of 4) spondy.  It worried me that my L5 vertebra had slipped farther forward on my S1, but since I didn't have pain symptoms, the surgeon told me that I didn't need surgery.  He did say that it would be best to keep an eye on it, and I would likely need surgery at some point, as I got older
Fast forward 10 years.  I was back to my original weight (chocolate, after all, has a lot of gluten-free options), and the pain returned. I had been lifting 30 pound landscaping bricks to build a wall in my backyard.  So I went back to my doctor;  he ordered another X-ray. The X-ray technician reviewed the X-ray, and even though they aren't supposed to comment, he said, "uh, ma'am, you should make an appt with your doctor right away."  I told him that I knew I had spondylolisthesis.  Turns out, the spondy hadn't progressed.  It was still at a 50% slippage.
So the doctor sent me to physical therapy.  I probably went 10 times, and it didn't help at all.  I finally had an MRI done, which basically re-confirmed the spondy.  Then I saw the surgeon again.  He told me that I had a few options.  Maybe losing some weight again would help.  I could have a steroid injection into the joint to reduce the inflamation in the sciatic nerve.  Or I could have surgery.  He also said, that as I lacked the bony connection, physical therapy would not be able to fix me.  I  cancelled my PT appointments, and scheduled my first steroid injection.  I was going to do everything I could to avoid surgery.
I received my injection in August 2012, shortly before a trip to Nova Scotia.  I was able to walk around almost pain free for about 6 weeks, and then slowly the pain returned.  Darn.  So I doubly resolved to lose weight.  But the more I moved, the more I hurt, so exercise was harder to do.  Sitting down on the floor or a chair helped to alleviate the pain, so I spent a lot of time sitting.  I still did what I could in the garden, but I definitely wasn't up to my usual weeding/trimming/caretaking.
In January of this year, I saw the neurosurgeon again, and this time asked him for more exact information about the surgery.  Cut me open, from the back side only, remove my pancaked disk, remove the floating bone fragment, put in some screws and rods to hold the L5 and S1 vertebra in place, and inject bone marrow and some new fangled stuff into the space to generate new bone growth.  I told him, I'm going to have another steroid injection.
I knew that if the first steroid injection didn't work well, that a second one was less likely to work.  And they'll only give you 3 total.  Well, my first injection worked for 6 weeks, so there was some success there.  So I had injection #2.  From  the start, I hurt a lot.  Even after the two day "waiting period" for the swelling in the nerve to decrease, I still hurt.  A lot.  I was so bummed.  After about 6 weeks, I noticed that I was having less pain though.  (Less pain, not no pain.)  Grrr.  So, have surgery before the family reunion in early August, or try to get through  it and have surgery in September?  Well, with a trip planned to Alaska in early June, there really wasn't time before the reunion.
The end of August rolled around and I began thinking.  I hurt.  This sucks.  It's not going to get better.  It can get worse.  I'm only getting older.  Time to schedule surgery.
Called the neurosurgeon.  Said I'm ready.  After some scheduling snags, the date was set:  Sept 3.