Yes, that's a rod in my leg and, yes, I'm also happy to see you

Just got home from VGH. Being told that the Wednesday surgery to implant a rod in my left leg went well.
The care we received, once again, was amazing. The give-a-damn of the medical community in the Lower Mainland continues to astonish both Carol-Ann and I.
Surgery scares me more than anything. Yes, even more than cancer. I don't hide it at all, but our surgeon -- Dr. Peter O'Brien -- and our anesthesiologist -- Dr. Jacqueline Trudeau -- went out of their way to try to calm me down. Dr. Trudeau suggested a spinal (yes, Scott Rintoul...you can call me Spinal Tap for the time being) instead of the full pull and I found things a little less daunting.
We see our oncologist -- Dr. Kerry Savage -- on Monday to go over what's next on the docket, but I believe right now that we'll spend about 10 days healing, get the staples out of the leg and then have one radiation session before starting chemo/stem cell transplants/infusions.
The rod -- technically a "gama spike" -- was brought into play with fears that the treatment to knock the tumour out of my left leg would have left it susceptible to breaking.
My one concern remains that the rod in my leg is stainless steel, while the six rods in my back from our eight surgeries in 2010-11 are titanium. Will the other multiple hardware patients out there mock me because of various metals in my body? It just doesn't feel fashionable or trendy.