Are you ready for round two? Home from the hospital on Sunday. Doing really well. Monday goes really well, and I acquire the accessories necessary for no bending, lifting or twisting (walker, toilet rails, shower chair).
Woke up Tuesday morning with PAIN, BIG PAIN.
{Here's a short tutorial on how 'pain' is measured according to the medical field: Pain: 1 - 2; can be completely ignored. Pain 3 - 4; pain can be ignored if mind is engaged in something else; Pain 5 - 6; OK, this can't be ignored - need to seek some relief; Pain 7 - 8; Seriously, do something NOW, it's all I can think about. Pain 9 - 10 Oh, Lord, this is unendurable.}
I spend a lot of time at Levels 3, 4, 5 due to my foot issues. So, when I say BIG PAIN, I'm talking 7+.
OK, so I woke up Tuesday morning at 6am with BIG PAIN. And it was nerve pain hurting in all the places I supposedly just had fixed. Talk about despair. My first thought was: the surgery to repair my back and free up the nerves hadn't worked. Moaning, crying, panting, rocking, and so forth while Drake works at making me as comfortable as possible. We waited until 8am and called the surgeon's office. First, they tell me not to worry, this is 'normal'. It turns out the nerve block the Doc used during the surgery had worn off, and I was feeling the inflammation of the nerves he worked around. Help was on the way. The medical assistant immediately sent a steroid pack prescription electronically to our local Walgreen's. This was about 8:15am
9:00 comes and goes 10:00 comes and goes. Drake calls the drug store twice and finally says, "What the HELL! It turns out Walgreen's has this little woman in a soiled house dress, wearing sagging support hose, dirty house shoes with bunion cutouts, with smudged half-glasses perched on the end of her nose, pecking away in her computer cubicle entering all the electronic prescriptions that have arrived for the entire Phoenix region into Walgreen's pharmacy computers. You can't get your prescription filled at Walgreen's until the electronic prescription sent in by your doctor is manually imputed into the Walgreen pharmacy system. And, it's not just Walgreen's, folks. It's EVERY pharmacy. There are no electronic links between your doctor's office and the pharmacies.
Meanwhile, the BIG PAIN is ratcheting up and and up and up. I think I hit an "8" on the scale at one point. Oh, and these aren't like labor contractions, there are no 'rest periods' - it's just all pain, all the time. Drake is alternating between anger and angst. About 11:00am, he just goes up to the doctor's office and cajoles a paper facsimile of the electronic prescription out of them. He heads for Walgreen's, and then GETS TO WAIT FOR 30 MINUTES to get it filled even though Walgreen's has supposedly 'had it' since 8:16 am!
At 1:00 pm after being in Level 7+ pain without any let up since 6:00 am, I finally get the first dose from the steroid pack prescribed to take the inflammation out of my agitated nerves. At 3:00 pm - poof, no more nerve pain.
You can take this as a cautionary tale. Here's the take-away: Get paper copies of any prescription you plan to fill either immediately or as future treatment for a medical 'event'. Electronic submission of a prescription is a minimum of a one-half day wait or longer to get it in your hands.
And in my eyes, Drake wins the day by defeating the big demons with ingenuity and persistence. Yea, Drake!
Wednesday, October 4, 2017
Sunday, October 1, 2017
A Harrowing Week!
Hello, readers. Boy, do I have a NEWSFLASH! One Sunday in San Diego, next Saturday in Sun City having back surgery. Here's how it all came about: Suddenly, on Monday, September 18, I got up to go to the bathroom about 2 am, and my left leg collapsed underneath me. I had been having increasing pain in NEW PLACES in my left leg and groin building all day Monday. On Tuesday, September 19th, we went to an Urgent Care Center and I got a steroid shot which seemed to calm down some of the pain, and make the leg stronger. However, all was not right, and it was obvious we couldn't wait until November 1st to have the previously scheduled back surgery. I managed to get the back surgery moved up to October 9th, and with that scheduled, we knew we should just get back to Sun City as my condition seemed to be mysteriously deteriorating.
We packed up and we left San Diego on Tuesday, September 26th, and that 400 mile ride was quite difficult for me. Wednesday, September 27th, I was at my primary care doctor having the pre-surgery appointment. Then, Thursday, September 28th, everything went to hell in the proverbial hand basket. My pain just kept increasing throughout the day and into the night. By the early morning hours of Friday, September 29th, I was in agony, and the pain I was experiencing in my groin and back was greater than any labor pain I've ever had. I dressed and undressed three times trying to decide whether or not to go to the emergency room. Finally, good sense prevailed, and I arrived at the Sun City hospital emergency room at 6am.
Within a few hours, I was admitted to 'observation', or as I like to call it 'purgatory'. You are on a floor of the hospital in a room with a bed, but you are not technically admitted. The best thing about being in purgatory is I was handed off by the emergency room doc to the hospitalist (hospital doctor). Why did this happen? Because even morphine in an iv drip was not touching the pain. If you can't take pills to treat a problem, they don't send you home. It took the hospitalist to really take hold of the pain problem. To manage the pain, he put me on something 10 times stronger than morphine delivered by iv in 3 hour increments. He also apparently laid the law down to my surgeon and explained he should come to the hospital and schedule an emergency surgery for Saturday, September 30th.
And, that's what happened: First, on Friday, I had a series of MRI's - I think five in total spaced out throughout the day with the last one happening at 8 pm on Friday evening. It turns out that Back Problem #1 was joined by Back Problem #2 in San Diego and #2 was causing the big pain increase. The surgeon corrected both problems with micro-surgery - meaning he used a tube in conjunction with a scope to correct both problems individually instead of laying open my back. I have two one inch incisions, which are sore, but I went home Sunday (today, October 1st) and expect to recover in 6-8 weeks. (Probably a little longer for me since I'm a slow healer.)
Here's the GOOD NEWS: As of Sunday evening, I have NO nerve pain running down my leg, or in my groin. The only back pain I'm feeling are the two incision areas, and those feel totally different than the nerve pain I was previously having in my back. The BAD NEWS (especially for Drake) is I can't bend over or twist my body or lift anything over 2 pounds for 6-8 weeks.) I'm using a walker to help me remind myself to turn my body not twist at the waist - harder than you think. The NOT SURPRISING NEWS is I found the walker at Goodwill for $10 and Drake went to pick it up. I left the hospital today with this walker
So..... In closing: If you live away from Arizona, and you are religious, continued prayers for healing, please. If you live away and are not religious, then think good thoughts for my healing If you have been a letter recipient currently, or in the past, I'm calling in your marker and would appreciate some mail. If you live in or around Phoenix, I'm not going to be shy at calling you up and saying something to the effect: And, what day in the next two weeks will you be bringing us a meal? I'm not cooking AT ALL until October 15th at the earliest, and probably not consistently for the next six weeks after that. See, there's ALWAYS A SILVER LINING if you just look for it.
We packed up and we left San Diego on Tuesday, September 26th, and that 400 mile ride was quite difficult for me. Wednesday, September 27th, I was at my primary care doctor having the pre-surgery appointment. Then, Thursday, September 28th, everything went to hell in the proverbial hand basket. My pain just kept increasing throughout the day and into the night. By the early morning hours of Friday, September 29th, I was in agony, and the pain I was experiencing in my groin and back was greater than any labor pain I've ever had. I dressed and undressed three times trying to decide whether or not to go to the emergency room. Finally, good sense prevailed, and I arrived at the Sun City hospital emergency room at 6am.
Within a few hours, I was admitted to 'observation', or as I like to call it 'purgatory'. You are on a floor of the hospital in a room with a bed, but you are not technically admitted. The best thing about being in purgatory is I was handed off by the emergency room doc to the hospitalist (hospital doctor). Why did this happen? Because even morphine in an iv drip was not touching the pain. If you can't take pills to treat a problem, they don't send you home. It took the hospitalist to really take hold of the pain problem. To manage the pain, he put me on something 10 times stronger than morphine delivered by iv in 3 hour increments. He also apparently laid the law down to my surgeon and explained he should come to the hospital and schedule an emergency surgery for Saturday, September 30th.
And, that's what happened: First, on Friday, I had a series of MRI's - I think five in total spaced out throughout the day with the last one happening at 8 pm on Friday evening. It turns out that Back Problem #1 was joined by Back Problem #2 in San Diego and #2 was causing the big pain increase. The surgeon corrected both problems with micro-surgery - meaning he used a tube in conjunction with a scope to correct both problems individually instead of laying open my back. I have two one inch incisions, which are sore, but I went home Sunday (today, October 1st) and expect to recover in 6-8 weeks. (Probably a little longer for me since I'm a slow healer.)
Here's the GOOD NEWS: As of Sunday evening, I have NO nerve pain running down my leg, or in my groin. The only back pain I'm feeling are the two incision areas, and those feel totally different than the nerve pain I was previously having in my back. The BAD NEWS (especially for Drake) is I can't bend over or twist my body or lift anything over 2 pounds for 6-8 weeks.) I'm using a walker to help me remind myself to turn my body not twist at the waist - harder than you think. The NOT SURPRISING NEWS is I found the walker at Goodwill for $10 and Drake went to pick it up. I left the hospital today with this walker
So..... In closing: If you live away from Arizona, and you are religious, continued prayers for healing, please. If you live away and are not religious, then think good thoughts for my healing If you have been a letter recipient currently, or in the past, I'm calling in your marker and would appreciate some mail. If you live in or around Phoenix, I'm not going to be shy at calling you up and saying something to the effect: And, what day in the next two weeks will you be bringing us a meal? I'm not cooking AT ALL until October 15th at the earliest, and probably not consistently for the next six weeks after that. See, there's ALWAYS A SILVER LINING if you just look for it.
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