Back Home - This Will Be Long

Well, it's been an adventure.  I apologize in advance if whatever I type doesn't make sense or has lots of typos.  I'm on A LOT of medicines. 

I was admitted to the ortho unit of the hospital on Tuesday evening.  I spent the night with a lovely I.V. port hooked up to nothing....just waiting.  The hospital bed was supposed to be all high-tech, but let me just say this for the record: it was horrid.  It was an airbed, which I am not opposed to in general.  However this airbed kept inflating and deflating periodically (which I'm told it was supposed to do) and was too soft and lumpy and generally awful.  I most definitely would have preferred even the hard ER beds because they would have been more comfortable.  On top of that, it was adjustable, like all hospital beds, except that I would adjust it to sit upright, and then about a half-hour or so later I'd realize that I was laying down again.  It would ever-so-gradually start reclining on it's own, which it was not supposed to do.  I mentioned it to several nurses and I think they fixed it while I was in surgery because it seemed to behave better afterward.

I went into the pre-surgery staging room and met with the surgeon, the nurse and the anesthesiologist.  I asked the anesthesiologist if she could please be careful intubating me since the last two times, I've had chunks taken out of my lower palate that have taken a great deal of time to heal.  I know she wasn't involved in either of those times, but I figured I didn't need one more part of my body to hurt.  As it turns out, I didn't even have a sore throat with this intubation, so she must have been good.  I got something in my I.V. to relax me (Versed, I think) and that's all she wrote until I woke up in recovery. 

I could obviously tell I'd been through surgery as my back was ouchy, but overall, my pain was decently managed and I thankfully have not struggled with nausea from the anesthesia, so after a bit I was taken back to my room.  Apparently the surgery took quite a bit longer than anticipated due to the fact that things looked a lot worse than the MRI indicated.  I had once again ruptured a massive chunk of disc which had managed to wedge itself pretty securely against/into my sciatic nerve and was a bit tricky to dislodge.  Then when the surgeon went in to remove some sort of joint (a facet joint, I think), he could immediately see that that had been the problem all along.  He said it was moving back at forth just barely touching it (which is shouldn't) and that when he removed it, it literally just disintegrated from massive arthritis.  Lovely, huh?  He told me later that if he had known how bad that joint was, he never would have done the second surgery back in August because he would have known it wouldn't have worked.  So it seems that there really truly was no other option but to fuse me and screw me back together.  He removed the entire disc, replaced it with a plastic spacer filled with my bone material and something else to help it grow (Miracle Grow, perhaps?) and screwed everything in place, then stitched me up internally on both sides and super-glued me back together.  I now have three lovely racing stripes running vertically across my very low back.  The middle one is healed and just a little over an inch and a half.  It represents the first two surgeries.  The other two are currently very angry looking and are at least two inches long on either side of the original scars.   I'm really, really swollen and ouchy back there and on Percoset for the incision/surgery pain.  However, the Percoset wears off about an hour before I can take more and so that last hour waiting for the clock to tick by is pretty rough.

The first night after surgery, I was in some pain and it wasn't time for more meds.  My I.V. had been removed earlier due to some issue with it (which is fine by me, I hate the things in my arm) and the only other meds they could give me would have been morphine through another I.V. site.  I declined.  I tried to get comfy in my bed, but that proved to be impossible and while trying to adjust the bed, the nurse call button/remote thing fell onto the floor.  I really, really needed to change positions and sit up or get up out of bed, but the bed rails were up on both sides of the bed and I couldn't get them down, nor could I call for help, so I spent a miserable couple of hours, in tears, hoping someone would come and check on me or check my vitals or whatever so that I could move.  Eventually someone did come in and got my call button back and helped me get out of bed and into the chair next to it.  It wasn't much better and I was still hurting a lot, but at least I could get a hold of the nurses again.  Talk about feeling like you have no control....it was scary.

I have had to humiliate myself and use the commode in the room (rather than the regular toilet) because it is taller and I can't bend or twist at all.  I much prefer my privacy, but my urine output had to be measured as well, so I just gave up and used the darn thing. 

I didn't get much sleep at all either night in the hospital and I am just exhausted.  I've been moving around as much as I can, and I passed my PT and OT exams with flying colors (walking actually doesn't hurt much and feels good to stretch, but I have to use a walker as my left leg just doesn't feel strong.  So at 35, I'm getting around my house with a walker.  Not exactly what I expected, but it's definitely necessary for now. 

I am getting better sleep at home, though still on the couch and still not in very long stretches.  I am having to set my alarm for every 4 hours so that I can take my Percoset and it is hard to catch up to the pain.  I'm also taking a muscle relaxer (which they forgot to give me at all the first night after surgery - lovely), gabapentin for nerve pain in my foot, which has come roaring back due to the horrendous amount of inflammation on my nerve, steroids to address said inflammation, stool softener because all the other meds have a huge tendency to constipate and all my normal meds.  I have to keep a list of when I took my meds last because I'm a little loopy and sometimes I forget if I already took it or not.  I don't need an overdose of anything!

I called the surgeon's office this morning and told them about the Percoset wearing off too soon and they are going to up that dose a little bit to see if it will help.  They are also upping the dose of nerve meds to the max to see if it will help with the nerve pain in my foot.  I may not make any sense at all once all that gets in my system, so I thought I'd update now while I still feel like I am mostly with it.

All in all, I can't say I'd recommend this surgery as a fun procedure.  It's definitely a bigger deal than the first two and it's going to be a long process to heal, not to mention that we still need the bone to start growing together, which will take several months.  So prayers would be greatly appreciated for quick and strong bone growth, healing and relief from surgical and nerve pain and strength to return in my left leg soon.