The hardest part of getting the bone disease at the time was that I wasn't able to see Kyle graduate. My grandparents came in and had to stay home with me while my parents went and watched him graduate. I know that they had wanted to see him graduate as well, so I felt like a giant douche sitting there asking them to get me drinks while they were missing out on their first grandchild's big day. Before they left, Kyle gave me a hug and said "Don't worry, high school graduation doesn't matter. It's the University graduation that's important, and you can see that." I cried when he said it, and I'm tearing up now as I write it. It takes an amazing person to play down something so big because they know how much it means to another person that can't see it. Once they left, my grandpa handed me the remote and told me to turn it to whatever, and my nana sat in the other chair and started reading. Every so often, they'd ask how I was doing, if I needed anything, if I was okay, and they'd always make sure I didn't have to get up. They're really great, and it's nice to know that if we need them they're there. I have an awesome family.
At this point it was still extremely hard to walk. It took a long time for my pain tolerance to go up, and even longer for my knees to stop hurting so much. Mentally I got used of it, and I accepted the fact that I was going to have this for the rest of my life. I knew I had to keep fighting, because I had so much in life that I wanted to do, and I couldn't let something, even something as serious as this, hold me back. Life goes on, and if you focus on what you're missing, you don't go with it.
The appointment with the orthopedic surgeon came pretty quickly. We came into the waiting room, a solid 30ft from the neurosurgery waiting room, and we sat down for a long wait. I'm pretty sure this was the time that we found all the magazines for university, colleges, etc. in the waiting room. I'd wanted to be an engineer since grade 8. We went through them half-heartedly, mostly wasting time (though it was good I did, because it helped me out later in the story). Finally it was our turn. We went into the examination room, and I climbed up on my throne. I'd gotten an MRI at some point in between then and here, so my images were up on the screen. A woman doctor came in and introduced herself, then looked at the screen. Then she goes "Oh. Oh my god. This isn't good. This really isn't good." She looked at us and said "this isn't good." We all just looked back at her with a look on our faces like 'thanks, tips.' She turned and went running out of the room. We all looked at each other, a little surprised at this. I'm not really used of people running from me.
A few minutes later, in walks a man orthopedic surgeon. Apparently the woman before got super intimidated by my awesome bones and got someone else to come and look after them. He was a lot more positive about everything, and didn't make me feel at all like an alien just jumped out of my MRI. He started telling us (really excitedly) about this surgery that we could do, where we put tantalum rods in my hips in an attempt to stimulate the blood flow to the head of the joint. They hadn't done it in western Canada yet, but they did in Ontario an so far they'd had good results. We were pretty skeptical, and justifiably hesitant. He was really pushing for it, not because he wanted to do it, but because he really thought it would help. We said we'd think about it.
We had an appointment with my neurosurgeon a little bit later. While we were in the appointment, the orthopedic surgeon knocks and comes in. He told the neurosurgeon about what he wanted to do, and together they tried to persuade us. Then he told us that he was going to make an appointment for us with a really well known orthopedic surgeon in Foothills to get his opinion on the situation. We agreed to go, mostly because the whole thing was hilarious. We accepted and got an appointment with the guy.
Because of all this, we decided that we would indeed to ahead with the surgery. It got booked for February of 2005, the last semester of grade 12. At this point, I still had the headache.
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