thanks everyone- i do plan on being careful, I have a note from the surgeon re: a 5 pound lifting limit and hospital discharge instructions with "no heavy lifting, bending, twisting"

the timing is due to their review of all my paperwork from before i had the surgery scheduled, but they do know that I just had surgery. The bummer for me is that i know that i can do certain things that will make me feel better right now, like particular types of massage, etc, but they will make me feel pretty good for a few weeks so now i feel like i have to put them off until after the FCE...because i don't want them to get a better idea of what i can do than what i can actually do.

Frankly, a walk around the block yesterday sent me into a huge flare, so i am not incredibly worried about how much i can do in front of someone at this point

What i have seen explained here and on a thread in the w/c forum is pretty much what i expected it to be, i am just worried about how biased it will be against me, i guess. There are no attorneys at work here, it is just me and the LTD company which so far has been quite reasonable. They are just trying to decide if my permenant restrictions are really meant to be permenant. I don't know how they can possibly evaluate that, but they seem to think they can...

in any case, I really appreciate everyone's responses...

Johanna