The wheelchair cost $25 to rent for the week. Jamey Goodman considers that to be a bargain. That’s also pretty much how he feels about his “DawgNation Appreciation” fan experience Thursday night at the Coca-Cola Roxy next to SunTrust Park.

That night might have been in doubt. Goodman has a condition with a pinched nerve in his back which will require surgery. Soon.

“I have a disc that has collapsed and it has pinched a nerve,” Goodman said. “So I do have surgery next week. I held that off in order to come to this. We talked about it. It is hard to get on the schedules to work with surgeons. You have to jump through hoops with other doctors. Let’s just say this was planned out where I wouldn’t be in a hospital bed recovering today.”

His surgeon will have to remove part of that collapsed disc to free up that pinched nerve.

“He hasn’t slept in a bed in the last two weeks,” his wife Jamie Goodman said. “He can’t lay flat at all.”

Goodman has slept sitting up the last two weeks. He can’t do stairs and admits he couldn’t lift a two-pound weight right now if it was sitting on his shoe.

That $25 wheelchair rental made his night possible.

“I couldn’t come without it,” Goodman said. “I couldn’t walk from the parking deck here.”

The Goodmans had V.I.P. tickets. It meant his wife Jamie was wheeling him around at the event. That was how he got around the Roxy.

Except when it was time for their V.I.P. picture with Nick Chubb, Sony Michel and Roquan Smith.

Goodman walked over to those guys. He had to.

“I got up for that,” he said. “I wasn’t going to have my picture made with all of those guys in a wheelchair,” he said. “That just wasn’t going to happen.”

Jamey Goodman (sitting) felt that the players on hand at the first DawgNation Appreciation event were just as thankful as the fans were on Thursday night. (Jeff Sentell/DawgNation)/Dawgnation)

It was a night for all those on hand who feel just the way the Goodmans do about that football team and the 2017 season.

They got the chance to tell those three Bulldogs plus Davin Bellamy and Lorenzo Carter what their final season at UGA meant to them.

“I go over to them and just simply say ‘thank you’ to all of them,” he said. “The ability to just tell them thanks was it for me. I don’t know those guys but they all looked more excited to be here than we are. That means something to me.”

Jamie carried on with her husband’s thought at that point.

“They called this ‘DawgNation Appreciation’ but they really showed their appreciation to us,” she said.

“That’s what you felt when you were around them,” Goodman picked up from there. “You felt their appreciation for us. It was a two-way street. It felt mutual. We were here to say thanks to them but they made it seem like they were really thankful tonight for all of us, too.”