I had a herniated disc repaired about 11 years ago Darren and hafta tell ya, I was nervous as hell going into it, infact even scared at the thought of the Doc cutting around my spine, but it turned out to be nothing compared to what I was expecting.
I went home from the hospital on the 3rd day with the least amount of pain I'd felt in a year and within a couple weeks the pain was all just a bad memory.
Your problems sound a bit more serious than mine were but good luck with whatever the Docs have to do and hopefully you'll come out of it all as well as I did.