The Home Stretch

My first surgery is less than a week away.  Five weeks ago, somebody told me the time would fly by, and they were right.  I don't know where it's gone.  I'm a little bit nervous about it, as I think everybody is before somebody cuts them open, but I'm ready.  I'm tired of being broken.

A few weeks ago, I figured out how I could sit and sleep without aggravating my hip.  That was good, but it required that I sit on my butt in a certain position all the time.  My lack of flexibility has prevented me doing as much pressure relief as I should, so the result has been pain in my butt where the hip bones put pressure on my skin, and the beginnings of a sore where my coccyx pokes through.  These are potentially serious problems if they get worse, so I have had to modify my behavior to juggle the pain in my butt and the pain in my hip.  Now I usually have pain in both, but it's manageable.  I think it may also be worse because I had to stop taking some of the anti-inflammatory meds I have been taking because they will make me bleed more during surgery.  I think I can handle it for another week though.

In the surgery, they will make what I believe will be a large incision on the side of my hip, and they will work across from the side across the front of my hip, removing chunks of bone as they go.  The bone is embedded in muscle, so they will have to poke around to find it.  They told me they have a device they can use during surgery to help locate the extra bone, but it doesn't work very well so they will probably use my September CT scan as a road map.  So they will do a lot of cutting, and I'll do a lot of bleeding, and when they are done, I will be left with cavities in the muscle where the bone chunks were.  These will fill with blood, and I'll need to worry about rupturing them for a time after surgery.

Dr. Dahners says paraplegics like me usually don't have too much trouble with pain after the surgery, but since my spinal injury is incomplete, and because of how much pain I feel from the HO right now, I assume I'll get to enjoy more pain than most.

I did some more research on preventing recurrence of the HO after surgery, and sent a question to Dr. Dahners about an experimental treatment I had read about.  His response was extremely thorough with many studies cited that convinced me that his proposed treatment is well thought-out, and that I should not do the radiation therapy.  That had been weighing on me for weeks, but I'm now comfortable with the decision.

My information is that I'll be in the hospital probably one to three days after the surgery to recover.  After that, I expect they'll send me to rehab.  My mom is flying in on Tuesday to see me through surgery, and to help me get setup in rehab afterwards.  I don't know where I'll be doing rehab yet, but I have been told that I might get as much as 6 weeks of it.  They won't decide where or how much until after surgery.

Part of me is looking forward to rehab.  I think this time, I'll spend more of my free time in the gym really taking advantage of the opportunity to get stronger.

Part of me is really dreading rehab.  If I'm in the hospital for 6 weeks, I'm going to get extremely bored and tired of the food.  I also worry that I'll have a roommate.  Last time I got my own room, but having no privacy for 6 weeks would be awful.  I also worry that I won't have as many visitors as last time.  All the visits with all the outside food made the experience very tolerable last time.  So please come visit me and bring me food.  I'm sure I'll be sick of the hospital food by the middle of week 2.