I have heard that bone grafts are the most painful surgery you can get. I'd always assumed that only applied to people who had the bone removed from elsewhere on their body. I was wrong. Here's a list of things you should never do after getting a bone graft:
1) Sneeze
2) Cough
3) Laugh
4) Shrug
5) Think about your shoulder enough to make it twitch a bit
6) Drop something in front of you and try to catch it with the graft-arm
7) Move, ever
8) Breathe
9) Cry from the pain of the aforementioned motions
I'm pretty sure I did all these things when I woke up from the surgery. It takes time to figure out you don't have an arm to use, so you keep trying to use it until you feel the pain.
I woke up in recovery with the feeling that the bone disease was gone. It was incredible. I could instantly tell the difference. But man was I out of it. I slept a TON and eventually a nurse came over and told me they didn't have a room for me yet, which was why I was still chilling in recovery. I realized it had been a couple hours since surgery already. Eventually my surgeon came in and was livid that I didn't have a room yet. He basically went out and called the nurses station of where I was headed, demanding a room. He's awesome.
Eventually I started rolling towards my room. It had taken a long time, but I was on my way to a nice, peaceful rest. I'm kind of making this sound like death... I didn't die, I swear. I got to my room with my family in tow. They told me it had been six hours since I rolled into my surgery, and that they were happy I was okay. Apparently they weren't told anything, though how could they be? Recovery wasn't about to call them, or let them in. Oh well. The acute pain services people came in and hooked up a morphine drip. This is the first time I've had one of these, where you hit the button if you're feeling pain. I was super hesitant to use it, but they told me I should because soon I was going to be in a TON more pain. So I did.
It didn't take long to get back to sleep. My family left relatively soon because I was exhausted. So I slept the night away, waking up occasionally to wonder why an older lady kept coming to my door. The next day I woke up and went home early, with a bunch of pills in my pocket.
I was in a sling for a long, long time. I have issues wearing that sling because it hurts my elbow, but I had the block this time so I got to wait a few blissful days until the feeling came back to my arm. I say arm because a couple fingers still had pins and needles or no feeling at all for about a week, which wasn't much help except that it made me think about them all the time on top of thinking about the shoulder. My family was extremely helpful. My boyfriend came in a couple times but he was quite hesitant about the whole thing. He wanted to go to a music store about a week after my surgery and I went because I figured he'd driven all that way to come and see me, so I should make him happy. Things like that were super tiring.
I went back to work relatively quickly.. I think it was a week. My boss told me I could so long as I didn't tell people that they beat me up. Work made me happy, it made me feel normal again. I had so many people in the building tell me about their surgeries, specifically the ones they thought I'd gotten (rotator cuff, dislocated shoulder, etc). I had one professor calling me Gimpy. It was great.
I went back to school about a week after that. School was just starting, and it was my last year. I didn't expect the workload of one of the classes, but to be honest, it was completely worth it. I remember them being so scared when I was able to start taking off my sling for comfort reasons, and to type. But I did that quickly, because I hate typing with one hand.
The worst part of this recovery was the fact that I couldn't drive for six weeks. My cab driver neighbour would take me home after school, and my dad would take me there every morning. This meant that I couldn't stay at school late or go early, and also made me hate needing to depend on other people. But really, who likes having to depend on people, right?
One final thing happened during this time was my ex-boyfriend that kept texting me decided to email me. He told me that the reason he'd been trying to get a hold of me was that he had gotten a diagnosis for asperger's, and that he'd finally realized because of it that he'd treated me badly and wanted to apologize. I read it a few times and realized I could take two paths with this. I could ignore it, just like his texts and attempts to chat, as he'd told me he would be fine with me doing in the email. Or I could respond and talk to him about it. I thought about a lot of things with this, but mostly my mind was stuck on how people treated me when they found out about my health problems. I imagined how I would feel had I sent an equivalent email, and how I would feel if a person ignored me. And finally, I thought about the support system that I was aware of him having and how I thought they would react to this news. In the end, the decision was quite easy. I emailed him back and told him that all was forgiven, and then did my best to give him a few pointers about being diagnosed with a major health issue that I had learned along the way. There are people that I know that still refuse to forgive him and don't understand why I did, but in my opinion there was no question about what needed to be done. I could continue on this thread, but just know that I feel there is no fault in what he did, and I hope that he is able to find help, support, and peace with his own health problems. The rest of his story is his story to tell.
After this happened, I went downstairs to head towards my awaiting neighbour. On my way down, I passed a sign for an information session about a potential employer. Naturally, I tore down every sign I could find and stashed it in my bag... no just kidding. I took a picture of it with my phone and made a mental note to discuss this with my parents. I had no idea about the series events this picture would lead to, but I now know that it was likely one of the most important pictures of my life.
Thursday, February 27, 2014
Friday, February 7, 2014
How's It Going? Why Is Your Face So White? Did He Hit My Jugular?
So August 28th rolled around. I made sure to get a lot of sleep before and hang out with my cat as much as I could. I threw balls left handed, juggled left handed, cooked with only my left hand... no, wait, I didn't do those things. I just thought I should try it while I had it. I was very prepared for this surgery in my mind.
We strolled into the hospital at the balmy hour of 2am (more like 6am, but there's not really a difference) and got checked in. Sitting in bed waiting for the surgery to start, I was so excited. It's hard to explain how you can be excited for a surgery. Most people in that room are sitting there being scared out of their minds, but not me. I was about to have my shoulder stop being a bitch. It was finally time!
The holding room nurse starting giving me an IV. I hate IV's. Not because I find them painful, but because my veins tend to decide they won't get an IV before surgery. So this guy tried to give me one and succeeded! But shortly after, my vein blew. My arm started swelling up and hurting and I was like "um, sir?" He ripped it out of me and said the anesthetist would do it. Poor guy. I really am a dream killer.
They wheeled me into the holding area to go into surgery, and Mom and Dad were both beside me. We talked to the anesthetist and he decided that the best thing to do for pain relief during and after the surgery was a block. It would freeze my entire left arm for a few days and I wouldn't feel a thing. In order to do it, they had to put a needle in my neck and there was a chance of them accidentally nicking my jugular and killing me. As much as I'm making this sound not very appetizing, the block sounded perfect, so we said yes. Then the surgeons walked in. I don't know if you've ever met surgeons, and maybe it's just my surgeons, but I've never met a group of more excited, happy people in my life. The two that were doing this one were hilarious. My usual shoulder surgeon is just great, a barrel of laughs really, and the other one really made an impression this day. He came in, having driven from the city that his practice is in, and show us the instructions he would be using to do the graft surgery. The paper was all wet and crinkled, and he told us that was because he'd had the papers in his back seat with his dog, who was wet. But we needn't worry, because he could still read them quite well. This cracked up all of us. There's a reason I let these people work on my joints, and part of it is because I just like them so much. So they signed my left shoulder and told me it was time for the block.
They wheeled me behind a curtain, then told me to look to the right. I could only see Dad, who stood there for moral support, but I could hear Mom's voice behind me, as she was standing within the curtain. I also heard the voice of my anesthetist and two more doctors. They had to ultrasound my neck as they did it to make sure they didn't kill me. I could see my Dad's face and it was going whiter and whiter. I could also hear the doctors talking about how not to hit important parts of my body with the needle. After what seemed like twenty minutes but I'm pretty sure was only 5, I heard "we're done!" and I started not feeling my arm. Voila! I'd give a thumbs up at the point but my had was frozen so it was more of a thumb-play-dead. Surgery time.
My nurse rolled me down the hall and near the OR, and I jumped off the trolley. We walked into the room, making sure to bring my trusty sling, and I approached the "bed". I put it into quotations because the bed for my shoulder surgeries is actually more of a chair. Once you jump on onto it and they strap you down and put everything into you and onto you, they lay it back and it's more of a bed. It's just better to get you in position for the surgery. So I got positioned and got all ready to go. Sometimes I find those surgeries a little uncomfortable in that chair because there's people putting things all over your body and you just kinda have to take it. Gravity likes to give you a hard time with the gown too. But eventually everything was in position, and they started giving me the drugs. I remember up to the forgetting drug again, but not to where I got to count. That guy is pretty good.
I feel a bit awkward about giving the gory details of this surgery on my blog. If I do succeed in making this a book, I will enhance it and put them in there, at least as much as I know. Just know that someone else's shoulder magically became mine! With the help of some very talented people.
When I woke up, I was shocked. I could immediately feel no bone disease pain. I knew it was a success. It was a good thing we had done it. They ended up replacing 70% of my humeral head. All that bone was either gone or ruined from my bone disease. I woke up with the graft in, the sling on, and a massive, wet/dry bandage stuck to my arm. I couldn't even peek. All I could do was snuggle back down into my hospital bed and await the 6 weeks of pain and sling-ness that I had coming for me.
We strolled into the hospital at the balmy hour of 2am (more like 6am, but there's not really a difference) and got checked in. Sitting in bed waiting for the surgery to start, I was so excited. It's hard to explain how you can be excited for a surgery. Most people in that room are sitting there being scared out of their minds, but not me. I was about to have my shoulder stop being a bitch. It was finally time!
The holding room nurse starting giving me an IV. I hate IV's. Not because I find them painful, but because my veins tend to decide they won't get an IV before surgery. So this guy tried to give me one and succeeded! But shortly after, my vein blew. My arm started swelling up and hurting and I was like "um, sir?" He ripped it out of me and said the anesthetist would do it. Poor guy. I really am a dream killer.
They wheeled me into the holding area to go into surgery, and Mom and Dad were both beside me. We talked to the anesthetist and he decided that the best thing to do for pain relief during and after the surgery was a block. It would freeze my entire left arm for a few days and I wouldn't feel a thing. In order to do it, they had to put a needle in my neck and there was a chance of them accidentally nicking my jugular and killing me. As much as I'm making this sound not very appetizing, the block sounded perfect, so we said yes. Then the surgeons walked in. I don't know if you've ever met surgeons, and maybe it's just my surgeons, but I've never met a group of more excited, happy people in my life. The two that were doing this one were hilarious. My usual shoulder surgeon is just great, a barrel of laughs really, and the other one really made an impression this day. He came in, having driven from the city that his practice is in, and show us the instructions he would be using to do the graft surgery. The paper was all wet and crinkled, and he told us that was because he'd had the papers in his back seat with his dog, who was wet. But we needn't worry, because he could still read them quite well. This cracked up all of us. There's a reason I let these people work on my joints, and part of it is because I just like them so much. So they signed my left shoulder and told me it was time for the block.
They wheeled me behind a curtain, then told me to look to the right. I could only see Dad, who stood there for moral support, but I could hear Mom's voice behind me, as she was standing within the curtain. I also heard the voice of my anesthetist and two more doctors. They had to ultrasound my neck as they did it to make sure they didn't kill me. I could see my Dad's face and it was going whiter and whiter. I could also hear the doctors talking about how not to hit important parts of my body with the needle. After what seemed like twenty minutes but I'm pretty sure was only 5, I heard "we're done!" and I started not feeling my arm. Voila! I'd give a thumbs up at the point but my had was frozen so it was more of a thumb-play-dead. Surgery time.
My nurse rolled me down the hall and near the OR, and I jumped off the trolley. We walked into the room, making sure to bring my trusty sling, and I approached the "bed". I put it into quotations because the bed for my shoulder surgeries is actually more of a chair. Once you jump on onto it and they strap you down and put everything into you and onto you, they lay it back and it's more of a bed. It's just better to get you in position for the surgery. So I got positioned and got all ready to go. Sometimes I find those surgeries a little uncomfortable in that chair because there's people putting things all over your body and you just kinda have to take it. Gravity likes to give you a hard time with the gown too. But eventually everything was in position, and they started giving me the drugs. I remember up to the forgetting drug again, but not to where I got to count. That guy is pretty good.
I feel a bit awkward about giving the gory details of this surgery on my blog. If I do succeed in making this a book, I will enhance it and put them in there, at least as much as I know. Just know that someone else's shoulder magically became mine! With the help of some very talented people.
When I woke up, I was shocked. I could immediately feel no bone disease pain. I knew it was a success. It was a good thing we had done it. They ended up replacing 70% of my humeral head. All that bone was either gone or ruined from my bone disease. I woke up with the graft in, the sling on, and a massive, wet/dry bandage stuck to my arm. I couldn't even peek. All I could do was snuggle back down into my hospital bed and await the 6 weeks of pain and sling-ness that I had coming for me.
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