Just when you think it's over.....

Philippians 4:7New King James Version (NKJV)

7 and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

We had a great Christmas, John and I quietly celebrated our 25th anniversary and we rang in 2015 in traditional fashion with a Twilight Zone marathon. Everyone was doing well and I was feeling great all things considered. My hair even stopped falling out from the combination of Vancomycin and Invanz that I had just finished taking by IV for six weeks.  On January 2nd, my best friend and I hit some thrift stores in Plant City, FL. I found an antique Tom and Jerry set for 3.00 at the first shop (I've wanted one for a long time) and we headed downtown to walk around some antique stores.

We were having a great time when I was hit with a sudden feeling that reminded me of getting the flu.   By the time we made it home, I crawled into bed and didn't get up much for a few days. Even though I had had a flu vaccination, it was apparently not the best match this year and my immune system was taxed.  My fever continued, I had body aches and a headache but nothing else. The next week we had our first cold snap of the season and my back was really achy. I emailed my surgeon's wonderful assistant to ask her if there was something that I should do or take seeing as this was my first experience with cold weather since my lumbar fusion surgery.  She emailed me back in about two minutes with the question "Have you been running any fever lately?"  Oh my goodness. I hadn't thought for one minute that there could be a connection with my previous spinal infection.

In the next few days I saw my surgeon (who later said that my eyes were sunken in and I looked so horrible that I scared him), my infectious disease doctors, had an X-ray, many blood tests and an MRI.   I was home alone when I got a phone call from one of my doctors letting me know that I had a large abscess in my spine and would be admitted that night for a procedure in the morning.  Not going to lie, I lost it. I sobbed and didn't stop. My poor son was the first one home and just held me while I cried. How could this be happening again? I called John who was on his way back from Gainesville because it was treatment day for our daughter.  Family came over, friends came over to hug me and pray with me, I took a really long hot shower and was tucked in at the hospital by my midnight deadline.  I wasn't happy about this but had just started experiencing the familiar infection related back pain so I was ready for whatever happened next.

My surgeon explained that I didn't have a simple round abscess in my back, it was pocketed (like a cluster of grapes).  They were going to try a procedure to drain it without surgery but weren't optimistic because of the nature of the infection.  If they couldn't drain it sufficiently, I would be having surgery again.  So they used a CT scan to decide where to place a catheter, numbed my back and drained out 90 ccs of gunk. I was awake for it all and saw everything. The procedure was quite effective, they started me on the same antibiotics again and my labs and vitals immediately started improving.  They left me with a drain which I would have for another two weeks. On my first night, my drain stopped working entirely for several hours.  I was so discouraged. God and I had a very long talk and I let Him have this situation. All of it. He gave me this incredible peace and I truly felt His presence. 

Things continued to improve. I survived the weirdest roommate situation ever which left me and the environmental services department of the hospital with serious issues. She liked perfume, was happy to "have the privacy to rub her naked body with oil", and cleaned the entire room by herself before she would lay down in bed.  On the second day, the perfumy smell was so overpowering that I ended up camped out at the end of the hallway waiting for a transfer to another room. I spent a couple more nights in unscented bliss and headed home with a shiny new PICC line and three more months of IV antibiotics ahead of me.  I had dodged the surgery bullet and was really optimistic that things were going to start getting normal again.

With the exception of the twice daily IVs, not being able to shower, and my hair falling out, things have been great. I have more good days than bad and I'm adjusting to my physical limitations. At this point I only have a couple more weeks of treatment left so my PICC line will be gone and life will get a whole lot simpler.....for a while.  Unfortunately, the hardware from my fusion was encased in my most recent infection.  Apparently once it's there, I will be carrying around nasty bacteria until my hardware is gone. That means that I will need to stay on antibiotics forever or until I have surgery again to remove that hardware.

That means surgery is coming again. Probably in May, probably followed by months on a wound-vac and who knows what else. The good news is that I'm at peace with whatever we need to do to put this baby to bed. I'm really okay with it.In the meantime, once my PICC is out and I'm allowed a little more physical activity, I'm going to have fun. I want to go dancing and to the beach and ride my bike and take a shower. Lots of showers. I'm taking a road trip with my girls and going out with John on his boat. It's funny, but I feel the need to squeeze as much as I can into the month or so that I will have before surgery, so that's what I'm going to do. 

When your spine turns on you...

Well, this has been a fun six months. Maybe not much fun, but I've learned a lot about myself and the people that I love most. The first week in September was pretty great. We spent a lovely afternoon and evening at the Magic Kingdom, I went to a fabulous estate sale and we were all doing well.  Then my spine decided that I had abused it for too long and it was done with me.

I was ironing lovely vintage handkerchiefs from the estate sale and my left leg decided to stop working. So much excruciating pain that I couldn't bear any weight on it. Long story short, over the next few weeks we found out that I had a slipped vertebrae (spondylolisthesis) and three bad disks. One that even decided to blow itself out and into my nerve canal.  I was using crutches, then an electric scooter to get from room to room in our house. I've been under the care of an amazing chiropractor for 10 years so he was my first choice in treatment. No relief there so then I tried physical therapy and finally a steroid injection.  Nothing helped and I had lost most of my mobility. The pain was about as bad as I can recall ever having.  It became very clear that surgery was my only option.

On Halloween, bright and early in the morning, I had surgery to scrape out the worst disk, fuse my spine with bone grafts and a metal cage, and try to align it a little better where my vertebrae had slipped, causing it to be unstable.  I was very much prayed up, had great confidence in my surgeon, had my foxy post fusion brace and was ready to go.  Everything went amazingly well. I woke up in less pain than I started with. My nerve pain was GONE. The recovery was easier than I had expected. Really, less painful too. I spent five days in the hospital and went home.  I was great but almost immediately my incision started draining. First a little, then a lot. I started running a fever and my incision started hurting and my back felt puffy. Ten days after my first surgery, I was having emergency surgery to remove infected tissue from my back.

The good thing about my second surgery is that I was already pretty mobile. I could get out of bed by myself (still using a walker a bit), I could stand up easier and had adjusted to some of the limitations after fusion surgery. The not so great thing was that I would now be dealing with a PICC line for IV antibiotics at home for six weeks. They identified five different strains of bacteria that were living in my back, and they were all quite nasty. I also ended up with another draining seroma which required a wound vac and eventually daily trips for hyperbaric therapy.

By Christmas Eve I was done with all of my treatment. I got to take a glorious shower, boxed up all my old medical supplies and slammed that chapter of my life shut. I was still wearing the brace, still had many limitations but I was done with that part of my recovery and so thankful.

During that time I learned so many lessons. First, how fragile life can be and how we can't take anyone for granted.  One Monday morning my visiting nurse was late. He was never late. I texted him a few times then left a voice mail.  A few minutes later another nurse called for our gate code. I thought maybe my regular nurse was held up chasing one of his cows down (that happened before) and so they sent someone else. That wasn't the case. My young, healthy, kind and caring nurse passed away. He was a husband, father and man of faith. We grew up in the same area of town and we attended the same church at different times. He loved his family and was so proud of them. It just happened so fast, and he was in heaven.

I also learned what it is like to be totally helpless.  Laying in bed trying to hold it so that I didn't have to wake up my husband again to take me to the bathroom, not being able to even roll over or take care of my own basic needs. That broke my heart for people that live that way without any hope of regaining mobility. During this time I saw my husband live out the "in sickness" part of our wedding vows. There was no limit to what he would do for me. He didn't lose patience once. He built me a platform to make it easier to get into bed, another to help me get into the car, completely managed my treatment and did everything he could to make my life better.  I was not in this alone. Our children, parents, family and friends were so there for me. God has blessed me beyond anything that I could have asked for.

Apparently, my back has been a torn up mess for quite a while and this could have happened a long time ago. It could have happened when we had little babies, when we lived two thousand miles away from family, when John was in the USMC and deployed but it didn't. While there is never really a great time to go through a medical crisis, this was the best of times for it to happen for me. Our kids are adults, we live in our hometown surrounded by our family and John works from home. God blessed me with a great time to go through this. That might sound odd but it's the truth.

This wasn't the end of the saga of my torn up spine. It's pretty much the half way point.