Dear families and friends
I have been waiting a while to write anything. I am now 4 weeks post-op from my surgery. I am told that the surgery went well. I can’t really speak to this as I don’t seem to remember any portion of it until I awoke and was in recovery. Thank heaven for anesthesiology. I got to read the operative report (which tend to sound like stereo instructions with a bit of old Latin mass church). The interesting portion was when I got to the part about what the nerve looked like. Now, I am paraphrasing a bit here. Apparently, the nerve must have gotten slammed between a Mack truck and a cement mixer. Then, it was left there for about a week. (Not actually, but it was severely squashed). Now, they did the studies that proved that the nerve still worked, but as I interpret things, the nerve is “extremely pissed off”. Please remember, this is technical speak, so don’t use this terminology with others. They will think you’re medical and call for advice late at night.
I have to admit, I am not where we (my family and my surgeon) thought I might be or should be at this point. I am having increasing trouble walking to the point where a 10-minute walk is a struggle. Bending or twisting feels like I just put my finger into a live electrical socket. I had to stop some of the pain meds since they really affected my mood (worse than my usual) and were making me down. So, we had to stop those. Last week, I got to go back to the OR for another steroid injection in my back. Did it help? Meh.
So, unless I am lying flat, various muscles on the outside of my right leg (especially my calf and upper hip) hurt – either cramping or shooting pain. They paused my physical therapy last week to focus on trying to walk. There is starting to be some improvement, but it ain’t exactly racing to get here. It might have stopped at Buc-ee’s. So, you know it will be there for a while. This is purely speculation, however.
I had hoped that I would be back and seeing my kiddos in the next week or so. At this point, that thought would be optimistic. I was trying to go over my notes in the charts, yesterday. I realized just how much I missed my kiddos (and even some of the parents…not all of them, let’s not get carried away here).
I’m not gonna kid you, this, oh what’s the word…sucks. I would say that I’m trying not to get discouraged, but that boat left a while ago. I’m bucking down (what does that expression actually mean?) and pushing through with occasional (all of the time) encouragement from my wife, who would nag me…not ever…really.
I will try to keep everyone updated but right now, I don’t know when I will be able to resume my duties. My family has been awesome about this. I have never been an especially easy person to live with. I have now turned that up to 11 (watch This is Spinal Tap to get the reference). I think my wife may be canonized at sometime early next week. We are looking to see if I can do some sort of telemedicine, especially for my ADD/HD kids, but it is still up in the air as to whether the insurance companies will allow it.
That’s all for now. The muscles are starting to spasm and I am gonna need to find another ice pack.
Doc M
PS: for those parents that I have had to prescribe steroids for their child, I apologize. I will still do it when I need to, but finally falling asleep at 6 am after eating the entire contents of the fridge, was eye opening.
