Tomorrow I will be 9 weeks post surgery! And it's been 7 weeks since I last updated. I think that things have changed substantially enough that I should post my progress. And there has been a lot of progress.
First off, I have been off all pain meds for about three weeks now. That chemical cocktail that I was taking daily is now a thing of the past and none too soon. The first one that I came off of was the Gabapentin, which was a horrible experience. It made me irritable for days and quite dizzy feeling. Once it was out of my system I felt quite a bit better though. Once it was gone my doctor and I decided to go off of the hydromorph which in comparison was a much worse experience. I've always heard that coming off of 'opiods' could be a bad experience and now I know, it is. Some light reading of wikipedia tells me that it would feel just like it did, horrible.
Withdrawal: courtesy of Wikipedia
The short length of action of hydromorphone and other metabolic factors mean that the abstinence syndrome, or withdrawal, is brief but intense. A low dosing user of hydromorphone opting or otherwise forced to quit "cold turkey" can expect a withdrawal syndrome as intense as that of morphine but much more severe. It is compressed into a spike, peaking in 14 to 21 hours and resolving in 36 to 72 hours, provided the user is not taking other longer-acting opioids and has normal liver and kidney function. All of the effects of hydromorphone and its attendant withdrawal syndrome can be significantly lengthened by such factors. Possible but less common is the opposite: some patients require oral doses of hydromorphone as frequently as every 90 minutes, and the withdrawal syndrome can peak in as little as 9 hours. Users taking over 40 milligrams per day can experience painful withdrawal lasting up to two weeks with symptoms including constant shaking, cold sweats, diarrhea, vomiting, muscle pain, body cramps, and insomnia.
It took a few days to feel better coming off that junk, but in the end all the feeling of nasea, dizziness, restless leg, itchy skin and general malaise went away. Once it did I had the realization that I was pain free.
After getting my system garbage free I started physiotherapy. I'm not doing alot, and it's not really intense, but it is very helpful. The fine folks at Beamsville Physiotherapy are teaching me the techniques and exercises to help regain core strength so that I can return to work. Another thing that they are helping me with is stretching out my hamstring. All the years of the nerve pain in my leg had the hamstring tightened up to protect the nerve. As my nerves repaired themselves I was able to use the stretches that they taught me to lengthen my hamstring and get rid of the constant sensation that it was about to ball up and cramp at any moment.
So I have come a long way very quickly. I am really hoping that I do not regress at all as some people do with this surgery. I would love for nothing more that being able to resume a normal life, something I have not been capable of for at least 10 years. Thankfully Christie is so supportive, something else I haven't had for at least 10 years. Her understanding, caring and helpfulness is getting me through this.
Either way I am done with this hodge podge mess of an update and will return to update again at some point in the future, probably after I return to work or make some other major step in recovery.
It's been two weeks today! I can't believe that two weeks have gone by already. There are some substantial differences in how I feel, which is great. I certainly hope that I am not cursing myself by saying so, but recovery seems to be going fairly smooth. :)
Well it's been a few days and progress has been made so I thought I would share. I guess if you were watching me you probably wouldn't notice the progress so much, but is happening. I notice differences in the pain, such as when I wake up in the morning. At first the pain would wake me quite early in the morning like 4am. Now it seems like it doesn't wake me until closer to 6. The other difference is that the morning pain is more tolerable, it is still quite severe but tolerable.
Another difference is the pain in movement. The simple things like getting up off of a chair is less painful. Who would have thought that the simple things could hurt so much? Either way the intensity and frequency of pain is lessening when it comes to the small things like that.
Unfortunately my doctor refuses to lower the strength of my pain meds because he thinks that I am not ready for it and that I will end up suffering and taking longer to heal. Apparently I will heal better and faster with less pain. I think it makes sense because I need to be up and moving to stimulate healing and I won't do that if I am in misery.
Yesterday was day 10 and I had an appointment with the surgeon. He was quite happy with the outcome of the surgery and the progress being made. I got to see the xrays of my spine post surgery and managed to take a few photos of them. All in all it seems as though things are moving very well. The surgeons advice to me was to live my life, do what my body will let me, stop when it protests and reach a little further every so often.
Okay, I guess I'd better get a post here and keep everyone updated. The surgery did finally happen on Monday October 3rd 2011 at 8am. Prior to that I went on a bit of a hiatus from posting because I was getting very frustrated with the cancellations and such. I just figured that I would post again when the surgery was done because everyone was going to start thinking that I am full of crap and there was no operation.
But there was and it went well.
Christie and I went to the Hospital good and early once and again and were registered by 6:00 a.m. From there you move to an area of the Hospital that I cannot remember the name of but it basically herds all the people together that are getting surgery and gets them set up on a bed to be taken to the patient holding area. In patient holding your anaesthetist comes to see you, in my case my surgeon came as well. Finally a nurse will come and take you into the Operating Room.
The operating room in this Hospital absolutely blew my mind. I had three nurses and three doctors looking after me. The table for spine surgery looks like it’s off a space ship with all these independent pads that support the body and manipulate it into the shape that they want. It seemed like all of the latest technological advances where there in that room with computer monitors and large tv screens everywhere you looked. Looking around the room made me feel very at ease about the competency of the Hospital and the hands that I was in. I only had a few minutes to look around at things and then I was asleep.
I woke up to a nurse calling my name and asking me how I was. I was in so much pain that I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs and punch her in the face for asking a question like that. I only remember telling them over and over that it hurt and I was cold. It took a few minutes but they managed to jack me up with enough narcotics to ease the pain which was a good thing because it was so bad that I thought I was going to pass out and throw up. Once the pain eased I managed to go to sleep for a while.
The next thing I remember was waking up in a different room and Christie was there wearing every emotion possible on her face, but you could tell that she was relieved. From there they gave me the pain pump which is connected to your IV and has a button that lights up every time you are eligible for a dose of narcotics. The idea is that you can self administer the narcotic when you are in pain. But you can only push the button once and then you have to wait until it is safe again before you can push it, in my case it was ten minutes. It turned out that for the most part I was rarely using it. The first night I used it 8 times in 8 hours when I could have used it 48 times. I don’t particularly like the idea of so much narcotics.
Day one I spent the remainder of terrified to move at all. No one told what I could or could not do, so I laid there immobilized with the fear of messing things up if I moved. That and the excruciating amount of pain that came with movement. So I just more or less drifted in and out of sleep, pushed the button and mumbled nonsense to Christie. I don’t really remember a whole lot of day one aside from pain and being dopey.
Day two was better, still alot of pain but better. The resident came and saw me at 6 in the morning to have a look at the incision and check to see how I was doing. He informed me that I could move around freely because my spine was immobilized and I didn’t have to worry. That was a tremendous relief knowing that I could move but the actual moving was no fun at all. Not sure how to describe the pain other than you don’t want it. It’s bad, very, very, bad.
Next in to see me was my surgeon, he wanted to go through the same routine, just without me rolling over to expose the wound. He also quelled my fears with an explanation of how everything was locked together mechanically and I had no worries about movement.
It seemed as though there was going to be an endless stream of medical professionals that day as the lab came next to get my blood and then came what I was dreading Physio.
They were there to get me up and walking. I knew that it had to be done, I knew that it was going to benefit my healing process, but I also knew that it was going to hurt like nothing else. It had to be done and I did it. Fortunately for me I was surprised, there was pain but no where near the pain imagined. We only walked about 20 ft total, to the door and back, but it felt like I walked 20 miles. And I use the term walk lightly, it was like a 140 year old man shuffling at the rate of 10 ft/hr. It seemed like forever and exhausted me. When I was done with the walk she wanted me to sit in the chair and eat my lunch. It sounded like a wonderful idea, if walking was that easy then this would be a piece of cake. It’s funny how you get ideas in your head that seem logical only to find out that there is no logic involved in this. I was wrong again and there was no logic again, that chair just about killed me. I couldn't eat my lunch fast enough to get back in that bed!
Again I was surprised about how many professionals were looking after little old me, because next came to ladies from the pain clinic. They are the ones that figure out your pain meds and how much to bring you up or down. They were there to see how the pain pump was working for me so that they could make any adjustments in my pain plan that they needed to.
From there the day only got better, Christie showed up which is always an improvement on anyones day. We got out for a bit of a walk which went better than the first one. Beyond that it was just visiting with Christie and trying to manage the pain.
Day three felt like substantial improvement. I woke up feeling much better, with greater ease in turning and rolling in bed. I went through the same processes as the day before with all the same visitors. The only real difference was that I could get up so much easier and felt great walking. I managed to get out to the tv room and a big lap around the floor.
Once again Christie came in the afternoon and we spent our day together. By this time the pain clinic had taken away my pain pump and IV because I told them that I no longer needed it and it was ineffective with my nerve pain. The nurse also removed my catheter at my request.
So I was dressed in my PJ’s and ready for some serious walking. Walking went quite well, we made some rounds around the floor and got my GI system moving along.
When we got back to the room I sat down for a few minutes and when I go up I did not use any support which was foolish because it set me back three days, the pain was incredible. It was straight back to the bed for me and I wasn’t moving for the rest of the day. It was so bad that I asked to get the pain pump back, unfortunately they can’t give it to you until the pain clinic reassesses you. So I had to lay there until the next day and just suffer.
Fortunately waking up to day four was much better. I was feeling quite well again. First thing in the morning they were telling me that I was being sent home and I just needed to tell them what time I could be out of there. After consulting Christie we settled on noon.
Since I was being discharged everyone needed to see me from the nurse that actually does all the work to thrombosis clinic. So we got to work and ridded me of my IV, and changed my dressing at which point the nurse was kind enough take a picture of the incision for me. He then got my package of orders from the surgeon that told me all the appointments I need to attend and what I can do before I see him again.
The nurse from the thrombosis clinic came and explained to me what I needed to take for blood thinners and when to get my bloodwork done. She also gave me a package with all the information on appointments, directions etc.
The last one that needed to catch me before I left was the physio team because they wanted to do stairs with me. They took me to one of the nearby stairwells and watched me go up and down the stairs to make sure that I could do them on my own. And they give you some little tips on how to do the stairs safely in my condition.
Beyond that it was just exchanging information with my roommate, having a few laughs and getting the heck out of there. It worked out well for us because my roommate Norm had a friend there that was getting to leave and he was incredibly generous with his time and efforts. John offered to take me down front with all of my bags to wait for Christie while she ran off to the parkade and retrieved the car.
And so we were gone. The ride home was reasonable once I was on the QEW, but the parts through town like Burlington St. were horrible. All in all I fared okay and made it home without too much additional pain.
My mom came over for a visit once I was at home and brought me a wonderful homemade lasagna and shepherds pie. After she left the kids showed up to eat the lasagna and have a bit of a visit before Christie and I took them home around 8pm. The end of the day was just the two of us melted into the furniture drooling like zombies. The week had caught up with us. I’m not sure what time of night the two of us got to bed but I think it was fairly late.
Waking up on day five at home felt like heaven. Just heaven without a pain pump. I had a lot of difficulty sleeping because I was completely unable to lie flat on my back, so I was forced to sleep on my sides which was reasonably comfortable but proved to bring a tremendous amount of pain to my hips in the morning.
After letting some pain meds do there work it was refreshing to get up and walk around. It actually felt really good. But I can’t stay on my feet the whole day or it will not feel so good anymore.
I had a doctors appointment to see if I could get my pain meds bumped down because I feel they are too strong. The doctor disagreed and told me to keep taking them for a week because if I take too little and the pain gets out of control it will take far more meds to get it back under control. So I’m still taking the stronger pills, but I will be seeing the surgeon on October 12th and he may recommend reducing my meds. At least that is what I am hoping.
By the time is was bedtime I was finally able to lie on my back, which would make for a great improvement in sleeping.
When I woke up on day 6 I was on my back and pretty sore but I opted to not take any pain meds and see what would happen. I ended falling back asleep until 8:30 and woke up feeling pretty good.
I got out of bed with little difficulty and had no trouble moving. Things were looking up.
Once we got our bodies woken up Christie and I decided to go for a walk up on the escarpment with the puppy. We ended up walking just over a mile with some of it being on a trail in the woods. Of course I was using a walking stick for added support and insurance. In the end it worked out very well as I was feeling better by the time we finished the walk than I did when we started.
The rest of the day I spent sitting and laying at Christies work while she feverishly got things ready for Tuesday morning, she didn’t like leaving me alone at home and I knew that she really needed to get these tasks performed so I insisted on going with her. God knows she does enough for me, it certainly wouldn’t hurt me to take 4 or 5 hours out of my afternoon for her. After all they do have a reclining couch there and plenty of computers for me to play on. It was not different than being at home.
After work Christie helped me get showered, made me some dinner and then we went out. She had some shopping that she needed to get done for work, so we decided to make an outing of it. I probably walked a couple of miles in Wal-Mart as well. It was tiring us out, but we knew it would make us sleep.
So in the end day six left me feeling quite well and I got plenty of therapy in :)
Tomorrow is the day and my nerves are frayed beyond belief. I didn't hear from the surgeons office so I'm assuming that my surgery has not been cancelled. My surgery is at 8 am and the paperwork tells me to be there at least 2 hours early which puts me at the Hamilton General at 6 am. I'm trying to convince Christie that we need to be up at 4 am and on the road by 5 at the latest. By this time tomorrow I should be well into the procedure. I'm not sure when updates will come but I will update whenever I can...
The clock is ticking and surgery is fast approaching. Yesterday was my last day of work, today I spend at the Hamilton Generals Thrombosis clinic and with my sleep apnea technician. Tomorrow and Friday is taking care of all the paperwork end of things such as EI and short term disability benefits as well as a temporary handicap parking permit. On top of that I have to make my way to my daughters new high school to see the guidance Councillor to make sure Abby is taking advantage of all of her potential. Then I will have what I am sure will be way too short of a weekend with the kids and then I will go under the knife on Monday morning at 8 am.
My intention is to keep this blog updated as I recover but I am not too sure how it will go right after surgery, it may take a few days before I am updating. From what I read and the videos I see I expect to be in some pretty crazy amounts of pain. I will do what I can but make no promises.
Two weeks from now I will be getting my things ready to head to the hospital on the morning of Sept. 19th. Well, at least I hope I am. My INR levels for my blood seem to be spiking a little bit, they are at 3.5 as of last Monday. My Coumadin dose has been decreased by 1mg per day to try and bring my INR down to the range we are looking for ( 2-3 ). No one has told me definitively but if my levels go up too much and we can't get it to stabilize I would imagine that it could hinder my surgery. I'm hoping that it won't but nothing has really gone quite right yet.
I have my appointment for the thrombosis clinic at The Hamilton General Hospital five days before surgery. Unfortunately my surgeon wants me off of the Coumadin 7 days prior to surgery and my appointment 5 days before with thrombo does not allow for this. We are desperately trying to get this sorted out as this too could affect my chances of getting this done on the 19th. Sometimes it just seems like everything is against me with this surgery. Either way we will push on and hopefully get this all done and over with.
Okay, it's time for an update. Apparently the vein that is affected by this so called blood clot is the basilic vein. Everyone keeps telling me how it is a superficial vein which is supposed to make me feel better I guess. When I think superficial it makes me think that it's not important or no big deal. But really what they mean by superficial is that it is close to the skin, it's not a deep vein. All veins still lead to the same place so in my mind it's just as much of a big deal as a deep vein.
Either way my INR readings are coming up very slowly, which is a good thing. I just wish they would come up quicker. INR stands for 'International Normalization Ratio'. The way it was explained to me by my doc is that normal blood is represented by a 1.0, meaning that your blood clots normally. As the number increases your blood is that much less likely to clot. Basically an INR reading of 2.0 means that you are twice as likely to bleed than someone with an INR of 1.0. Now I'm sure this is quite a rough representation but the idea is that as the number goes up your ability to coagulate goes down. From what I understand I am looking for an INR of between 2.0 and 3.0. Hopefully I won't have to be on this crappy med for too long. I am told that it will be a minimum of 3 months but possibly as much as 6 months. And if I develop another clot I may have to stay on it for a lifetime. Yay me, things just keep getting better.
On the good side of things I did hear from the Thrombosis clinic at Hamilton General Hospital and I have an appointment for about a week before surgery. They tell me that it is very rare to cancel surgery because of a clot, so it looks like it is still game on. Of course at this point I'm not sure how I should be taking this as nothing has gone right so far. Sheesh.
Another thing that I have almost worked out is that I went and saw the sleep doctor to find out the results of my sleep study. It turns out that I stop breathing 26 times per hour, that's 208 times in an 8 hour sleep. So I have another study tonight in which I will be using a CPAP machine so that they can write me a prescription for what I will need. By this time next week I should be using my very own CPAP. One of the good things about this is that the government pays the first 75% for the machine and I pay the rest which of course will be reimbursed by my benefit plan. So long story short is that I will have no out of pocket expense for this. And it should improve my quality of life significantly. Plus I will have much less of a worry post operatively.
Well I may have to reset the timer. Surgery may get postponed, again! I am starting to get a bit tired of this. My doctor has put me on Coumadin, which is just a trade name for warfarin. Coumadin acts as an anticoagulant. Sounds wonderful doesn't it?
This new twist on my quest to have my spine repaired starts with my appendectomy. Post surgery I had a bruise where the IV was. So naturally I figured it was normal for my arm to be sore in that region. After a week I noticed that my arm was a bit swollen above my elbow and it was quite tender and warm. I went and saw the doctor who figured it was cellulitis and prescribed an antibiotic. When I ran the course of antibiotics the swelling went down and the pain went with it. About a week later I was noticing that the pain was migrating to the lower part of my arm. I was slowly getting warm and inflamed. The final straw was that I could feel the veins in that region, which I could never do before.
I went and saw my family doctor who thought it was phlebitis but sent me for an ultrasound on the 1 in a million chance that I had a blood clot. So apparently I should buy some lottery tickets because I hit the jackpot, I've got a big clot in my arm. Apparently the IV that I had for the surgery has caused it.
So now I get to have injections of innohep which keeps my blood from coagulating until the coumadin kicks in which can take from 3 to 5 days. This round of treatment lasts a minimum of 3 months, and up to 6. As it stands the surgeon will probably not want to operate on me if my blood won't clot. So we may be postponing again. Grrrr.
The one upside is that I have been referred to a thrombosis clinic which may do something called bridging. Basically if my understanding is correct means that they will take care of my blood by weening me off the coumadin long enough to have the surgery then get me back on it and monitor me throughout. Basically they take responsibility for me not bleeding to death. Sounds like so much fun. I don't know how I get all the luck.
My surgery now seems like it is years away although in reality it is only 65 days 16 hours and 43 minutes away according to the new countdown timer that I have installed on the upper right hand side of the blog. I booked my sleep study yesterday and go in on this Saturday July the 16th.
I guess I should probably explain why I need a sleep study. Christie spilled the beans to the pre-op team at Hamilton General Hospital that I have undiagnosed sleep apnea. According to the Anesthesiologist sleep apnea and general anesthesia can be a very unfriendly combination. When you have sleep apnea your airway becomes obstructed and your breathing becomes repressed. Anesthesia and opioid narcotics such as morphine also repress breathing. In short during your recovery in hospital they worry that you could stop breathing in your sleep because you have so many factors repressing your breathing if you have sleep apnea.
And that is why I am having a sleep study done. Actually I have thought for years that I should have one done. If I do have sleep apnea and have it treated I would probably function that much better. One of the things that can help with sleep apnea is losing weight because the fat deposits in the pharynx either bring on sleep apnea or worsen the effects.
I have been working on a healthier lifestyle for myself for about a month now which includes eating in a way that will prevent me from gaining any more weight and hopefully lose some. This works out well for me with the sleep apnea but the reason I started this was that I will be laid up and not doing very much at all for a couple of month post surgery. The last thing I need is to gain a bunch of weight in recovery. Either way I have lost 12 pounds so far and intend on losing another 30. And hopefully the weight will keep dropping as the clock keeps ticking.
When it rains it pours. On Tuesday July 5th, two days before surgery I got all of my business sorted out. I went to the union hall and let them know that I would not be available for some time. Then I checked in at the benefit office and got my paperwork in order for short term disability. My last visit was to the doctors office to have my paperwork filled out for disability and EI. Once at home again I did everything I needed to do online ending with filling out my EI for sick benefits. I literally just pushed send for my claim and got up to go to the bathroom and the phone rang. It was the surgeons office calling to cancel my spinal fusion surgery and re-book for September 19th. Of course I was absolutely mortified. That kind of news completely takes the wind out of your sails. It wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't two days before surgery. I had put off getting all my paperwork sorted out because I wanted to be sure that we were close enough to the surgery date that it was going to happen. It also doesn't help that I was psyching myself up for months, this is not an easy decision to make or take lightly. And then to be that close to the date and have the rug pulled out from under you. Unfortunately the surgeon has had a family emergency and taken the rest of July off.
So with the bad news in hand I was reeling. It felt like a downhill slide was happening. I couldn't believe that the news was hitting me so hard. I felt absolutely horrible. It even seemed like it was affecting me physically. I was almost feeling sick to my stomach. As the afternoon started to pass I started to feel worse. I figured I had to get up and moving and busy to make myself feel better. Nothing better than slow cooking ribs on the BBQ to make a man feel better, so I got dinner started. Then I went for a walk to the hardware store to pass some time and get some air. I ran into a friend on the way, who commented that I didn't look to good. Of course I didn't look too good, I'd just received a giant blow, my spirit was broken. By the time I got home from the hardware store I was in misery, so I turned off the BBQ and crawled up to bed.
The next thing I remember is Christie rubbing my back and trying to get me up. She seemed concerned that something was wrong. I'm not sure what I told her but I knew that I had a bellyache. I needed to go potty and managed to make my way downstairs even though I felt like I was going to pass out several times on the short journey.
After that the first thing I remember is being on the bathroom floor with Christie and her mom Pam over me trying to get me up and talking some nonsense about calling an ambulance. I just wanted her to stop nagging me and let me sleep. At this point some time had passed, it was pushing toward 9pm and the last I remember was maybe 5:30ish and Christie get home from work around 6. So I have no idea how long I was on the bathroom floor, but Christie was sounding pretty upset. I figured I had better make an attempt to get up if she was ever going to stop nagging me.
The pain getting up was excruciating but I managed with a chair. I made it to the couch and laid down again. Christie kept talking some gibberish about going to the hospital and I kept telling her she was crazy, or something along those lines. Then she told me that if I didn't go that she was going to stay up all night and watch over me. At this point I realized two things, one was that she must be really worried which means that I must look pretty bad, and two was that I would be quite happy just going to sleep but I was not going to let her stay up all night.
So at that point I go myself back up and said, "if we're going we're going now". We got in the car and headed for West Lincoln Memorial Hospital. I'm not sure how long we sat in the triage area (last time we were 3 hours before being triaged)but at some point I just couldn't take it anymore and collapsed to the floor. At that point I heard something about 'code red in room 14' and I was instantly greeted by a nurse that was telling me that I couldn't stay on the floor. They helped me up and into the triage area where they gave me a barf bag (I must have looked ill). Within a short period they had me in a room.
Diagnosis was slow and painful. The bloodwork showed that my white cell counts were down and poking and prodding along with the xray suggested that my appendix was inflamed. But they needed an ultra-sound to confirm and being a small town hospital they didn't have a technician until the next morning. If that wasn't bad enough they didn't even have a surgeon on staff that could deal with me if it was my appendix. If it was my appendix they where going to have to ship me off to the Hamilton General Hospital.
The next morning appendicitis was confirmed by the radiologist. So it was off to Hamilton with me. Now I had to wait until 2pm for the transfer ambulance to retrieve me and take me to the Hamilton General. Once we arrived at the General and got situated at the emergency desk the fire alarm went off. Poor Christie and her sister Ann were darting through all the zoned doors trying to catch up to me so they could find out where they were taking me, but as they caught up they were told that they had to exit the hospital until the alarm issue was settled. Luckily the hospital was still accepting emergencies, but everything elective was cancelled. At least I was in.
Of course I had to go through whole process of poking and prodding by the Hamilton doctors. Once they were satisfied that my appendix had to come out they had me sign the consent forms. Then they broke the bad news, I'd have to wait until 11pm and it was only about 4:30. So I was going to have to suffer for another six and a half hours. At least there was enough time for Christie to go home, have some dinner, grab her car and come back before I went in for surgery. The decision was made, they were off.
Forty minutes later the head resident was back to inform me that a spot opened up in the O.R. and I was being taken in immediately. I called poor Christie to inform her, the poor girl was panicked and half way home. They turned back and made it just before they wheeled me into the O.R.
Everyone in the O.R. introduced themselves to me and gave me an understanding of what was going to happen. The anaethetist put me to sleep and the next thing I know someone was calling my name as I woke up and immediately puked into the tray they were holding in front of me. I never would have believed it but you really do puke when you come out of the anaesthetic.
I fell asleep right away and the next thing I remember is Christie and Ann standing over me. It was all uphill from there. Sleep, awake, sleep, awake, it was a groggy mess for the next 6 or 8 hours. Thursday morning I woke up and felt great. My tummy was sore, but compared to how I felt before surgery I felt fantastic. Before long I was up and walking laps around the ward. Every doctor and resident that I ran into that had something to do with my surgery was quite surprised at how well I looked and how much walking I was doing. I ran into the head resident who told me that my appendix looked 'very angry'. I asked him if it was perforated and he said that it was not but didn't look far off.
I went from clear fluids to fluids to full diet in a matter of a few hours. Once Christie showed up we went for lunch in the cafeteria and a big walk around the hospital. We got back and the nurse told me that I had been discharged.
So we hurried and got me packed up and got out of there just before 2pm. What an experience to be checking out from an appendectomy on the very day that I should have been getting my spinal fusion on the same floor of the same hospital.
Went to pre-op today. Lots of poking and prodding. Tons of questions, with paperwork out the wazoo. The day started out with registering at admitting, who then sent us up to the lab where they took my pee along with 4 vials of my blood and an ecg. They then sent us over to the pre-op clinic where we registered once again and headed for the waiting room. Eventually a nurse came and got us to weigh and measure me, then send us back to the waiting room. Along came another nurse who took me into a small room to interrogate me...errr, I mean ask me relevant medical questions. Once she was finished her routine she sent us back to the waiting room. Then the anaethetist came and got us to beat me down some more. Once we were done with her we were free to go. Of course it was now 11:30 (two hours later) and we were starving because we had not yet eaten. So we tried on the cafeteria food for size.
Over all things went pretty well. I learned a few things, including the fact that a pre-op takes two hours not 30 minutes, surgery is on schedule for 8 am on Thursday and I will have a self administered pain pump post surgery. So I will legally and at no cost be able to stay as high as I want until they pull the plug on it. And I almost forgot, the surgeon has me booked in hospital for 4 days not three, and the surgery for 4 hours.
Now the clock is ticking faster than ever and the nerves are building.
I'm now set up to update this blog mobile style. I've got an app for my iPhone which I am testing while watching a lightning storm. I figure that I won't be able to bring my computer in the hospital and after I get home I won't be very mobile. So blogging from my phone will be the best option. :)
I finally opened my pre op package yesterday from the hospital. Surgery is at 8:00am on Thursday. We have to be there at least 2 hours ahead of time. Christie is not very excited about this, being there at 6 means we will be leaving by 5-5:30 and she doesn't do mornings very well. I don't mind because I'll be going back to sleep at 8. The thing that bothers me is that my stomach has to be empty so I can't have a morning coffee.
We've been getting things ready for post surgery. Most things aren't too exciting, but everything is making me feel old. Things like this.
Of course I am finding my own fun with the grabber, the cat and dog don't seem to appreciate my fun and neither does Christie. There is plenty to prepare and I'm sure that I will forget or not even think of many things. Thankfully I have Christie and she seems to think of everything. In the end we will probably never be prepared enough but we'll get through it.
I wish there was more to write about pre-op but there just isn't, aside from boredom that is. I'm sure post-op there will be plenty to write about. The problem will be that I just may be in too much pain or too dopey from the pain meds to do much writing. I guess we will just have to let time tell the story.
In one week today I will be in hospital. It's now 7:00am and I would assume that I will be getting prepped for surgery by this time next week. I'm certain that the knots in my stomach will have grown tenfold by then. I'll be spending the next week trying to get ready in any way that I can. I'm going to need magazine, books, movies, games etc. It would probably be a good idea to get a few meals ready in the freezer to make things easier for the first few days back home.
There are plenty of reasons that I am itching to get spinal fusion surgery. I'm sure there are ones that I don't even think about. There are probably ones that I have not even realized. But there are plenty that I do think about. These are the top ten.
10. 40 hours of work. It would be nice to not have to come home because I need to take a large dose of some crazy powerful narcotic. Or because the nerve pain is breaking through and there is just nothing I can do about it except lay down. It's getting very hard to live on an inconsistent work week. And employers don't tend to favor people whom they cannot count on showing up.
9. Driving. It would be nice to have the confidence to get in the car knowing that I can drive to wherever it is I am going without being doubled over for the majority of the drive, or having to pull over and put my seat back.
8. Puttering around the house. I don't know how many times I have pulled all the tools and materials necessary out to do some little odd job and ended up having to lay down instead, or writhe in agony on the floor every two minutes because I really just want to get the job done.
7. Walking. I love to go for nice long walks. I just don't want to be known as the neighborhood weirdo laying down on peoples lawns (I've done it) because I just can't make it home.
6. My motorcycle. I've done alot of work to get that thing back up and running so that I can get my license and ride.
5. Dinner. There is nothing worse than sitting down for dinner and having to hit the floor every two or three minutes. I'd love to be assured that I can just sit and enjoy the food without the worry of the pain.
4. Quality of life. I'd like to just enjoy everything more.
3. Kid stuff. Playing, hiking, picnicking, whatever it is, it would be nice to do more. I'm sure it's frustrating for the kids when they want to do stuff with me and I can't. I'd love to be able to do alot more with them without having the worry. After a while of planning things only to have them fall through because you are having one of those days you just tend to give up and end up not doing much. They deserve to have me out doing kid stuff with them.
2. Showers. I would love to take a long hot shower. There is no reason that I should have to sit, kneel, lay down or be in the fetal position to take a shower. Showers should not be painful and I shouldn't have to rush through them just to burst through the bathroom door and collapse on the floor.
1. My loved ones.
I feel bad for Christie. She is absolutely wonderful and does way more work than anyone should without complaint. She shoveled the driveway this past winter many times on her own. I tried to help but I would just end up laying in a snowbank while she shoveled. It does not make me feel good to watch her do the shoveling while I sit back in the warmth of the house.
The kids. I can tell that it bothers them that I suffer quite often. Justin often reminds me to take my pills. He will just show up with them when it is time to take them. Olivia will automatically push over to the middle seat in the car just in case I have to lay back during an emergency stop when we are driving. They all ask often if I am okay when they can tell that I am clearly not okay.
The clock is ticking, 9 days 9 hours and 37 minutes and I'm getting a bit nervous. Watching videos on Youtube of people recovering after the same surgery is a bit frightening. I'm not entirely certain that I am ready for the amount of pain that I will be in. I am sure that I will manage just fine and that I can deal with it. I'm just a little worried about the intensity of pain. I've been taking dilaudid which is an incredibly strong narcotic and it doesn't do a whole lot for me. My concern at this point is that they will have to come just short of knocking me out to be able to take the pain away.
Only three days of work left and I'm off for the duration. Friday is a holiday and Monday is my pre-op. I'll be taking Tuesday and Wednesday off to tie up an loose ends before the surgery. N
I going to have spinal fusion surgery on July 7th at 8:00am. This blog is to track my experience and or progress.
I have had back pain for as long as I can remember. It has slowly gotten worse over the years and has become incapacitating in the last year. The severity has become such that I can not even eat a meal without ending up laying on the floor a few times to relieve the pain. The reason I lay on the floor is because I have what my doctor calls a mechanical issue. My spine is not attached to my tailbone. I moves forward over 5/8". When doing this it crushes the nerve roots that exit the spine at that elevation. Laying down lets the spine move enough to let the pressure off the nerve roots thus taking the pain with it.
Of course you would think that painkillers would just take it away but that is not the case. We headed down the road of narcotics and we quickly found as the dosage of percocet increased that it was doing nothing. Most of the pain I experience is 'neuropathic' pain, and this pain seems to be immune to narcotics. Once we were moving into the realm of morphine my doctor suggested that we try something he called a 'pain clinic trick'. He got me started on something called 'gabapentin', which is an anti-seizure drug for epileptics. It's supposed to stop / slow nerve transfer, affecting the way the brain receives pain. At first it didn't seem like it would do anything for me but I agreed to keep at it as we adjusted timing and increased dosages. In the end I'm at 3200mg a day which makes my doctor very nervous as he says that it is outside the recommended daily high dose. I believe he mumbled something about it being an 'experimental dose for short term use only'. Whenever I tell other doctors how much gabapentin I am taking there eyes get big like saucers.
Once we were on track and the gabapentin was being reasonably effective at managing my neuropathic pain I still had the mechanical pain to deal with. From what the doctors tell me my spine is sitting directly on my tailbone without the added cushioning of a disc. Once I wasn't feeling the nerve pain so much I started feeling the mechanical pain. Now we needed to head down the narcotic path again. And once again the narcotics were not working. In the end I am taking dilaudid which is an incredibly potent drug. Some reading on wikipedia tells me that it is thought to be 3-4 times stronger than morphine. I guess that's why my doctor almost crapped his pants when I asked to double the dose from 4mg to 8mg. And was that ever a mistake, 8mg rendered me a total zombie. I couldn't even lift my head. We have now come to the conclusion that for me 6mg is the high dose.
So it would seem that we have reasonably effectively managed my pain to get me through to surgery. And surgery can not come soon enough for me. Gone will be the days of calling for help from the side of the highway because I can't drive any longer, or having to get someone to drive me home and another to follow with my car because it's just physically impossible for me to drive. Laying on the kitchen floor while the rest of the family are enjoying their meal and the kids asking if I'm 'all right' will be a thing of the past. This will definitely be a life altering event. The best of all of it will be that I will actually be able to work a full week!
Of course the recovery will be long an boring. I hear conflicting stories of the duration of recovery, but I know it's going to take some time and it's going to hurt. I'm told that I won't be driving for 2 months which is a real bummer. They also tell me things like I won't even be able to load the dishwasher or put in a load of laundry! Basically it sounds like watching TV is as much as I will be allowed to do. Of course my surgeon says that everyone is different and that my body will let me know what is okay. But I am living with the 'recovery nazi' and she's not going to let me do much :( Of course I say that tongue in cheek, I'm very happy to have Christie, especially for my recovery. If anyone knows back pain it's her. She will be a huge asset to my recovery. But make no mistake, she'll be a Nazi about it.
