As much as she drives me nuts sometimes, I'm sure I would love her if she were the coach of my team. Wish her all the best. My wife had a crazy surgery called a corpectomy (spelling?) where they actually remove an entire vertebrae and put in a spacer that eventually is overgrown with bone. She was young (mid 40s) at the time and tolerated it pretty well. But recovery is challenging and living with some significant restrictions for a year can be frustrating. When we joke about it now, we talk about the first time I had to shower her after the surgery. She's not feeling great and we have the brace off, which is scary because if she moves the wrong way it can cause damage .... etc, etc.... So we are very serious and getting this done. I was outside of the tub and reaching in to wash her legs and I was just overcome with uncontrollable laughter as I had this thought that I blurted out to her and cracked her up, too: "This is very different from the memories I have of showering you when we were dating."
Anyway, nothing but the best wishes out to Coach Mulkey.