One week today!

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.

Top Ten reasons I want Spinal Fusion Surgery

Top Ten reasons I want Spinal Fusion Surgery

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.

Nerves

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

Surgery awaits!

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.