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.
No comments:
Post a Comment