Down Time

With my current recovery downtime, I'm spending lots of time reading and getting some knitting done. The kids both want fingerless gloves like the ones I'm finishing up for myself. I also made a pair for the girl child's doll (E turns 11 soon -- I'll actually have a project done before the day!). I think I'll make a caplet for the doll as well, and use up some of the yarn that is taking up space under my bed. A cousin having a baby in a few months might also get something handmade. Anyone have a great, easy baby pattern that uses washable sock wool? I have tons of pretty stripey stuff I bought to make baby sweaters with, but the sweaters seemed more than I could get knit up with this tiny yarn...

Anyway, I'll be struggling to jump into an academic term that is well underway later in January, but, for now, I'm taking it easy and maybe getting a bit of the vacation I missed with the pre-surgery pain.

I will be going stir crazy soon, though, so keep me in mind if you are headed somewhere interesting in the next week or two... I can't drive, but I'm sure I'll be up for going out soon!

What in the world...?

So coming out of the surgery, I keep finding new "things" on my body that I hadn't expected. I realize that I just went through fairly significant surgery, but these surprises have me wondering just how complicated this surgery got and when. Did the doctor leave out many parts of the surgery when he described it to me beforehand or did he have to adjust quite a bit once he had me on the table? Were there more questions I should have asked?

When I woke up, I immediately realized I'd been catheterized. This was very uncomfortable but the nurse explained that the surgery had gone over 5 hours (doc and I had talked about a 2-3 hour surgery), so it was needed.

Next up was the realization that I had a second IV. The nurses disconnected this "large" (nurses description) IV from the drip but left it in "just in case."

I found all these small punctures in the palms of my hands on my wrists. No one had an explanation for them until the next day when someone finally suggested it was where they had run some EMG lines to test my nerves during surgery.

During the evening, the tops of my thighs went numb, especially on my right leg. This was profoundly disorienting since numbness had sent me to docs in the first place, but this was a NEW numbness, and coming off of just having had spine surgery was scary. The docs sort of shrugged this one off, saying I'd been on my belly in one position for a long time and that probably did it. I've waited this out, and it has gone away.

The skin over my hip bones, especially on the right, was irritated, red, raw... another side effect of being draped over pillows and foam blocks to extend my spine on the table, I guess.

Later, in the middle of the night, after I'd been admitted to the hospital, I found all these dried bloody patches in my hair. The nurse shrugged on this one but finally suggested my head had been screwed into a halo during the surgery. Again, news to me.

When the nurse went to remove my IVs so I could come home, we found a second line had been put into my left hand, at the wrist. (That made for a total of 3!).

When I came home, the irritated spot on my right hip turned out to have some sort of filament or splinter in it -- no wonder it was so angry. What had I been dragged across when I was knocked out?

And then last night, I came up from the dark basement where I'd been watching a movie with the kids to find my left hand (in the thumb area) and wrist heavily bruised -- when they hadn't been 2 hours before. This is where that 3rd IV had been hiding. IV site #2 is also a bit bruised all of the sudden.

This is not any sort of interesting post, but I wanted to set down for myself this series of unexpected bits. I hope they are done. I'm ready to scale down the meds (steroids, nerve calming agents, antibiotics, etc.) and stop finding new, strange things that have been done to my body. I'm ready to heal.

Sitting Down

For the first time in probably a month, maybe two, I am typing at my computer while sitting down. The surgery on Jan 6 was long and involved -- some bone in my spine was shave back (L4), a cyst was drained, and then all of that cystic tumor that could be removed without doing damage to my nerve was scraped away. My incision hurts. A 3-4 inch line down my spine, sealed shut with a couple dozen staples is hurting right now, but the searing, burning pain that had taken permanent root in my lower right leg is completely gone and while my right big toe is still a bit numb, I know it is there. As the swelling goes down, it should get better. I can lay on my right side. I am not leaping out of bed in pain shooting from my right hip down to the tip of my toe.

Now I must be patient and give my body weeks to heal. The narcotic haze helps the incision pain but also makes my fingers and my tongue stumble, but I'm so relieved -- almost scary relieved -- that the surgery seems to have worked. The pain was beyond what I had endured with the hip and I don't really have the words to describe the terror it brought to me as it got worse and got worse so quickly.

But now, now I can actually contemplate adventures to come. A trip to the desert. A trip to Hawaii. Sleeping 7 hours in a row.

Ah, December... the month of invasive procedures

Two years ago, I had hip surgery.

Last year, I had a breast biopsy that went bad. I didn't blog about it. There was no cancer, just a horrible morning at the hospital in which I bled out and ended up woozy for a couple of days and bruised up for months. And they only got one of the two "suspicious" sites. When they recommended a surgical biopsy for the second, I declined. Two subsequent mammograms have showed no changes, so there doesn't seem to be any need to go through that trauma again.

This year, it looks like it will be back surgery to remove a lesion that is pushing on my L5 nerve root and causing me stupid amounts of pain. It might be a synovial cyst. It might be a schwannoma (benign) tumor on the nerve sheath. A second MRI on Saturday should clear up which it is, but on some level it doesn't matter. The surgical treatment is essentially the same. Other options, namely physical therapy and steroid shots in my spine, make no sense to me. They will not impact the thing that is pushing my nerves and making me hurt. I suppose that if I couldn't face surgery, I might go these routes, but the disruptions to my life have become constant and so incredibly painful that I'm ready and it can't happen soon enough. I hope the call comes soon.

liminality and the royal we

Hunh. Today is my 13th wedding anniversary. I'm not really sure what to do with that since I am not really married anymore, except in the eyes of the state. I'm not uncomfortable where I am in this liminal state of commitment, but there is a certain awkwardness. I have trouble this time of year, when there are so many surface-y social chit chat sessions at holiday gatherings and such... how do I tell my stories? Is it "me" and "I" or if they are the older stories, are they "we" and "us" even though there is no current we. And then today. What do I do with myself today?

Leave it to my grandmother to point the way. She stayed over this weekend and at one point yesterday she casually said, "well, I'm not sending you an anniversary card this year." I told her that seemed quite appropriate, considering. Later, as I drove her home, she said, "I think it's good that you've found a way that works for you and you shouldn't have to bother with anyone fussing about how it is 'supposed' to be." Thanks, Grandma, that is a way better sentiment than I could get from any card.

Pant Wars

And now for something completely different...

I'm having a small war with my pants. Or maybe it is with pants makers. It all started a few weeks ago when I braved the mall on a mission to find talls for a tall friend. While there, the attentive sales people in Eddie Bauer spotted my cord lust and convinced me to try the "curvy" cut. While they are soft and lovely, curvy cuts apparently end at the top of my hip bones -- about a mile from waist. They also, well, curve around where I curve, so I'm feeling sort of extra out there. Where I am really struggling is in the lowness of the cut in the back. They are still a bit too big in the "waist" (for lack of a better term, since this top part of the pant is really no where near my waist!) and they are low, so when I bend or sit, unless I am careful: coin slot. Noooooooo. How do people live like this? I think the pants are kind of cute when I'm feeling cute (I notice I like them best right after I've been to the gym) and when I'm standing or walking, but sitting is strange and I find my self hiking them up a lot even though they are in no way too big for me.

Okay, so this is totally inane, but its been a long week and the drugs in my system are leaving me a bit hazy and the papers are still not graded... and so I'm thinking about my pants.

radio silence

It has been a long time since I've had anything to say on here, it seems. I think that is mainly because all I have wanted to say to internet-land for the last couple of weeks is, "OUCH!" What began with a strange pain/weakness in my right hip the morning I hopped out of bed to fly to California in mid-October has become a constant, painful companion of late. I recognize the patterns from chronic pain of the past... I'm struggling to focus, to do what I need to do, to get out of the house. I'm terrified that if I stop moving now, I'll stop moving for good.

Some progress with the doctors reveals that it is some damage happening to my L5 nerve root happening in my lower back that is sending the shooting pain and painful numbness down my right leg. My lower leg burns. Even my toes tingle painfully with numbness. Not surprisingly, I've maxed out on ibuprofen so that I can function a bit but by the time evening rolls around, I'm more often than not crawling off to bed whimpering. But then at some ugly hour (usually beginning with a 4 - or 5 if I am really lucky) I'm up, howling in pain. Really, I've found myself howling. I was actually screaming in my car the other day while stuck at a light on a 5 minute drive: the pain had flared up, I had to get out of the car, but I was stuck.

I've got some better drugs, but I'm not taking them now (4:40am) because it is my morning to drive the carpool for middle school. And then there are meetings. And a sizable stack of term papers that must be graded. I will, however, take the prednisone I started yesterday. Yesterday was a better day than I've had in a while, so maybe there is some hope but then the system is doing a crappy job of finding me a specialist to see and a place for physical therapy. There is much more waiting ahead of me. I call the doctor and wait. The nurse calls me back, but only half my questions are answered. So she goes back to the doctor and I wait. Then the referral is not clear, so the clerk has to find the doctor and I will wait some more.

In the meantime, I'm feeling somewhat paralyzed by my partial diagnosis (we now the nerve group but won't know how it is being impinged until I get the MRI next week). In the meantime, should I go to the gym? It feels okay when I am there, crappy after, then (after a nap) I generally feel better for the rest of the day. I have felt myself getting weaker, especially in the last two weeks, sometimes I'm shuffling when walking.... This terrifies me. Maybe the gym makes me feel better because I let myself think I am fighting the decline and confirms that I can still move. But what if I'm making it worse?