Recovering

Today marks exactly 1 week and 1 day from my back surgery. I am doing ok. This recovery process is definately different from the other 2 back surgeries, and as always, has been an adventure so far.

.....Rewind to last Wednesday:
7am-12noon: Frantically & unsuccessfully trying to wrap up loose ends at work. Due to my new job starting and the my old position not being filled yet, it was a huge challenge for me to leave for 6 weeks and feel as though I had done everything. Finally, I had to just leave some things as is, and say oh well.

1:30pm: Pick up Axel's mom from the airport, finally begin to relax at home. We have a wonderful home cooked meal, then I did some last minute Amazon book purchases, ending the evening with a call from the anesthesiologist working on me the next day. He was friendly, reassured me that the surgery would be fine, and kind of put me in a zen-like calm state.

4:00am: Zen-like calm state has flown out the window, and I am convinced that I am going to die during surgery, or that I will be paralyzed as a result of the surgery. I shed some tears, smoked my last Camel for a few days, and got my ass in gear. Put on the brave front for Ak nad his mom, both big hospital haters/strong dislikers of.

Thursday
6:30am: Arrive at hospital check-in. I am freaked out again. They begin "processing" me for surgery by giving me a Valium to start ( bless them ), getting me into my garb, height-weight-temp-blood pressure tests, then finally they start my IV after 3 bad attempts (old nurses- please retire!). Ak has been with me throughout, and I can feel his torture at seeing me go through this, so I try and stay as positive as possible, even with the death/paralysis thoughts filling my brain again.

8:20am: Kiss to Ak, then wheeled up to surgery. Meet the anesthesiologist, Dr. Chow, and he just starts with the nice talk and the good gas, and that is all she wrote until I woke up in my room about 4pm. The surgery took 5 hours and 45 minutes, and was a success!

Thursday-Friday: Loving the morphine drip!! I always forget how good it is. My mighty-morphine machine does have a bell on it, so it dongs everytime it hit the button for more juice. Well, at some point, I had a melody going due to my speed pushing. I got all paranoid for 10 seconds, then started making music again. I found out from the nurse later that it gave me a dose every 10 minutes, whether I pressed the button or not, so I definately felt a bit better.
My surgeon came by and said GREAT! The occupational and physical therapists came by and said GREAT, so the next thing you know, I am on my way home and back in my own bed by 6pm Friday night.
I was sent home with amazing parting gifts: a walker, a commode chair, a picker upper (long and short varieties for reaching things), and sock putter-onner, and underwear and pants puller-upper, and a shoe putter-onner. DELIGHTFUL!

There is nothing like being home, and I was really feeling good :)

Saturday arrived, and I was able to take a shower. It was awesome, until I caught a glimpse of my three incisions -HOLY MOTHER! I am so Frankenstein-yikes.

1:00pm: My girlfriend Julie and her 2 girls plus our friend Rob come over for a visit. I am feeling so good and so high on Vicodin that I am walking all over the place (very stiffly, mind you), chit chatting, laughing and smoking, until Julie's oldest girl smacked me across the back. I don't think she believed I was hurt, and was trying to see if I was lying or not. Well, the visit was over as you can well imagine. The three of us had another lovely dinner, and then I was off to bed*.

*Getting in and out of bed: Occurs 10-15 times a day = most painful parts of my day. It requires sitting, kind of free falling from sitting to laying on the bed on my side, aligning my spine still on my side, then rolling on my back with a pillow between my legs, then rolling from side to side to get positioned, then elevating my legs (requires ak's help), at this point, I am hopefully comfortable and can catch 1-3 hours of sleep until next pain med dose or tinkle -time. Repeat in reverse to get out of bed.)

Sunday: Took another shower - feeling super.....until at 4pm, I notice that my right knee, calf, ankle and foot are starting to resemble sausage. Immediately go to bed, feet up, getting up only to use the bathroom.

Monday am: Right leg is worse. Contact surgeon, who immediately directs me to go to the ER to ensure I don't have a life threatening blod clot...ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
Within 10 minutes, we are back at the hospital, where it takes 3 1/2 hours to get a sonogram and determine that I don't have clot, but I have to stop trying to act like I didn't just have back surgery and rest all the time. 6 weeks for recovery means 6 weeks.

So...here we are at the end of my first recovery week, and I can say thay my attitude has improved towards my limitations, and I am not allowing myself to feel anything but good things. For example, it still hurts to get in and out of bed, but not as much as yesterday.

Ak has been amazing. He has HUGE amounts of patience with me, and also is able to calm me down when I get upset or completely panicked. For example, a few times that I have woken up, I have forgotten about the surgery, and when I can't get out of bed, I start panicking and freaking, because it feels like I am a turtle stuck on it's back. Also bad are the RARE occassionas that I oversleep my medication time, and wake up pretty much crying and yelling.
My boy deserves a medal for hanging in there with me.

So there you have it. All is pretty good, and each day gets better than the next! I am alive and not paralyzed, and with the help of modern medical technology, I now have the ability to set off airport alarms :)