I'm getting fat. If you've seen me in the last 6 months, this is not news to you. I haven't had much to do for the last year besides sleep 'til noon, eat, poop, eat some more, and go back to sleep. On the days that I cry incessantly for no reason, I am exactly like an infant.
Being fat is not helpful. The extra weight complicates transfers, and the belly reduces the size of my lap which is really my only work surface. Anything I want to move from one place to another has to balance on my lap because I need both hands to push the chair. At some point, the belly can also interfere with hip flexion. So far that isn't one of my problems.
You may see my added size only as a negative, but you're overlooking all the positive aspects. I like to think that the extra volume increases my visibility when I'm out in the street. When a driver sees me in a crosswalk, they think, "If I run over that gigantic wheeled invalid, I will undoubtedly break my car!" Also, the extra weight increases my stability in turns probably.
At this point, you're obviously wondering, "How has he achieved these incredible benefits to his health and well-being?" There's no one simple answer to that question, but I will share one important contributor. Fresh baked cookies.
I use my toaster oven every day, and I don't know how I ever lived without one, but recently I realized I could use it to bake small batches of cookies.
I went to the store and got some pre-cut cookie dough.
I prefer these to the Nestle
And I got some toaster-oven sized cookie sheets from Farberware.
I cut a silicone baking sheet to fit
And I bake it in the toaster oven for 11 minutes.
Preheats in 45 seconds
And then I have fresh baked cookies for dessert!
Yum!
This is just one of the ways that I keep myself squeezably soft!
Yesterday I felt incredible. Very little pain and lot of energy. Best I've felt since rehab. Gus came over and we did a practice car transfer, and it was effortless.
Today I don't feel great. Lots more pain. We did a car transfer, and it went quite badly. Sigh.
Gus has been busy the last couple weeks with a project he's been doing for a neighbor. He does these sort of jobs for his neighbors sometimes, and I think he's kinda proud of this one so I thought I'd share some before and after pictures of it.
I wouldn't say I'm 100%, but I'm feeling much better.
My hip feels a lot better. I think the pain is less than before surgery. Some days it is anyway. There are still painful days, but generally, I think things are getting better. I'm not testing my range of motion much yet, but I think it's already better than before. Everything isn't perfect. I've still got to wear the boots because of this thing on my heel, and I have pain in my butt from sitting, and pain in my back from the hardware, but I have stopped bleeding, and I'm feeling pretty good overall. And just in time too. It's time for football.
There's so much football going on right now, it's almost overwhelming. The Ravens don't look like they are going to be very good this year after losing so many players in the off season so I'm not too excited about that. It looks like the Eagles' new coach is going to have them playing some interesting football this year, so I'm looking forward to see what they do. They may not win a lot, but their games should be interesting, win or lose.
It's crazy how much football they can cram into a single weekend. If you try to watch just the good college games on Saturday, and then all of the NFL games on Sunday, it takes the whole weekend. Fortunately I have nothing better to do right now.
I think I'm out of the woods now, but it was pretty hairy there for a while.
After the meds finally wore off, the pain came back, and the hip hurt like hell. Besides that, the low blood count kept me feeling extremely weak and woozy for several more days. All I wanted to do was sleep, but I still had to wake up every 4 hours to pee.
Sunday, almost a week after surgery, was the first day I finally felt like I had a reasonable amount of energy, and I felt like a lot of the pain had subsided. Sunday afternoon I decided it was time to take a shower. For the surgery, they put compression socks on my feet and lower legs to squeeze the blood back up toward my heart. When my mom them off, she noticed that the pressure sore on my right heel had returned.
I was pretty upset about it because it means I have to go back in the boots. The contracture boots keep my heels from making contact with anything, but they are not fun to wear. The last time I had this pressure sore, I had to wear them for 6 months. I don't know what they weigh, but I think it's 3 or 4 pounds each. They make transfers harder, and they make it difficult to spend much time outside. I view it as a huge setback.
So when my mom discovered the sore, I attempted to pull my foot in for a closer look so I could render my disgust more directly. When I did so, I heard a noise come from the vicinity of my hip. It was sort of a quick "fffffft". When I looked down at my thigh, there was a massive amount of blood coming out from under the bandage. It was more of my own blood than I'd ever seen before. I'm not sure myself, but my mom thought it was about 1/4 cup. Beyond that, blood was still flowing from a cut about half an inch beyond the end of my incision.
We both took a moment to freak out a little, and then we paged the orthopedic resident to get some advice. They advised us that the dark color meant the blood was from a hematoma. Basically the area of the surgery had continued to bleed internally, and when I bent my leg, it squeezed the pocket like a huge pimple until it burst. They insisted I come to the hospital so they could take a look at it. So I spent a big chunk of my Sunday afternoon at the hospital getting poked on by doctors. They tried to squeeze as much blood out as they could by really laying into the site of the surgery with their full weight. It didn't hurt much when they were doing it, but it hurt a ton the next day. When they were done, it was still oozing blood at a pretty good clip.
Every few hours
So for the next couple days, we had to change the bandage every few hours and it still ruined several pieces of clothing. It continued leaking for 4 more days although it slowed each day.
Between the blood and the pain, we thought it would be best if my mom stayed another couple days. Fortunately Southwest is really nice about letting you change tickets so she left Wednesday instead of Monday. By Wednesday, I was much more under control. The pain was tolerable, and the blood flow was under control.
So I think I'm out of the woods. I'm certainly not done recovering. Not by a long shot. But I think I'm done with the worst of it. It should get easier from here.
Recovery from this surgery has been the worst by far.
The last few days since I left the hospital have been really tough. They gave me a slow-release morphine pill when I was in the hospital to help with the pain. I was never quite sure how much it was doing, but I felt pretty good on Wednesday when I left. On the way home, I felt good enough to eat at my favorite restaurant (Firebirds Grill) while we waited for CVS to fill my prescription order.
When I got home, I took some of the new pain drugs we just got, which should be the same ones I was taking at the hospital, and I went to bed for 4 hours. When I got up, I thought I was dying. My mouth was so aggressively dry that it almost unendurable. I know what you're thinking: "His mouth was a little dry? That doesn't sound so bad." Have you ever heard of the cinnamon challenge. It feels roughly like that.
So I drank some water and calmed down, and then I transferred to the wheelchair so I could go pee. That went okay, but by the time I was ready to transfer back into bed, I felt so weak and light-headed, I didn't think I could continue sitting up, and I definitely didn't trust myself to do the transfer into bed. We ended up using a slide board to do the transfer so I didn't have to support my weight. I haven't used that since rehab over a year ago.
When I got in bed, I felt completely terrible. Weak and light-headed and just awful. I wasn't sure what my blood pressure was, but I felt it might be dangerously low. I couldn't find my pulse which has never been a problem. Eventually, I decided to call the paramedics to come measure my blood pressure.
While I was waiting for the paramedics, I decided to use my fancy adjustable bed to elevate my feet, and my mom had the idea to use my fancy air-pumped leg squeezers to try to squeeze blood up toward my heard. I think that worked, and by the time the medics arrived, I was feeling a lot better. When they measured my BP, it was in a pretty good range, but I would love to know what it had been.
The paramedics said that both the dry-mouth and the weird feeling could be caused by the morphine, so I decided to stop it cold-turkey. The pain would be better than the side-effects. So I stopped all pain meds on Wednesday night.
The problem with slow-release pain meds is that they don't leave your system just because you stopped taking them. It is now Friday evening, and I think I'm still feeling some of the after effects of the morphine. I think I have a morphine hangover. I haven't been out of bed in two whole days, and the dry-mouth, while improving, is still a problem. The lightheaded feeling is better, but still present, and the pain has slowly been returning. Turns out the morphine was doing a lot about the pain. In general, I feel horrible, but I don't regret stopping the morphine... yet.
I'm so glad my mom has been here. I don't think I could do this without her. She has allowed me to stay in bed by bringing me everything I need when I need it. Without her, I would have had to transfer out of bed every 4 hours at least to pee. I don't think I could have done it.
In the next hour or so, I'm going to attempt to get out of bed and into the wheelchair. I have no idea how it's going to go, but I'm looking forward to trying it. I think the pain is going to be a problem, but I also think I'm going to have to either suck it up or go back on the morphine. It would have to be incredibly bad for that to happen. I don't ever want to take morphine again.
HO Surgery number 3 is in the books, and I got to keep the leg. As I lay here in my hospital bed the day after surgery, I feel like I should post an update.
I was able to talk to Dr. Dahners before the surgery, and explain my concerns about what I wanted to remove. We agreed that he would try to get all the pieces.
The last 2 HO surgeries have caused relatively little pain for me, but I think I have been steadily regaining a small amount of sensation in my right hip. It's what has allowed me to feel pain from the HO, and after this surgery, I was in agony. A day after surgery, I'm still very reluctant to try to move this hip at all. I doubt it will damage anything, but it hurts really really bad.
I talked to Dr. Dahners this morning, and he told me he thinks he was able to remove all of the bone we talked about. I had been wondering since the first surgery what sort of tools he uses to cut bone, so I asked him. Hammer and chisel is the answer. That would explain the pain. I wish I could get another CT scan to confirm the results, but he says he tested the range on the OR table and it was in the 125-130 degree range. That's all I could ask for.
I lost a lot of blood in the operation. When he removed the piece attached to the femur, it cut a lot of blood vessels. I ended up losing 900cc of blood which is about a quart. So twice what you would give to the Red Cross. They wanted to avoid giving me a transfusion because it increases the risk of complications, so I've been very tired today. My blood pressure has been coming up slowly over the last day. Right after surgery, it was at about 84/43. It's now up to around 89/47, but that's still really low. So I get light-headed whenever I exert myself at all, but the pain has been keeping me from exerting myself.
I know they are going to send me a physical therapist tomorrow morning to evaluate my strength and mobility. I'm expecting to go home tomorrow, but it will be interesting to see how that happens.
If this post seems a little loopy, it's because I have been taking the narcotics this time. The past two surgeries, I was able to avoid the good stuff, but this time, I'm taking whatever they offer me. So far it has been Oxycodone and a slow release morphine pill. The morphine particularly helps, but it makes me a little loopy. Tired mostly.
Mom and I are getting pretty good at this surgery thing. We have gotten really good at packing for these short hospital stays, and really good at remembering what to ask for and when. If you ever need to go in for a surgery that will result in a night or 2 in the hospital, I can help you out. For instance, bring ear plugs. It can make all the difference in letting you sleep at night. Also, bring your own pillow. Hospital pillows are made of plastic for easy cleanup, but that makes them as uncomfortable and sweaty as they could possibly be.
I'll probably be going home tomorrow, but it will be interesting to see how active I'll be when I get there. I'm taking some of these drugs home with me, and I may end up sleeping the rest of the week. I guess it just all depends on how quickly the pain subsides.
I got my hands on the CT scan on Friday, and it's pretty fascinating. If you come over, you should ask to see it. Anyway, here is the picture that is most relevant to what we're doing with this surgery today. It is from the side.
CT scan
So the part circled in red is in front of my pelvic bone, and the part circled in green is attached to the front of my femur. When I bend my hip, those pieces of bone approach each other and crush all the muscle that is between them.
Dr. Dahners believes the part in green is what is causing the bulk of my problems, but it's deep inside and near a big artery so it will be dangrous to go after. I think he's willing to try it, but if he messes up, I could end up losing the leg. I hope that doesn't happen, but I think it's worth the risk
