Monday, November 23, 2009

AND . . . More doctor's appointments

Today I went to see the surgeon who put my leg back together. He is a very nice doctor and even showed me pictures of my leg during surgery. He pointed out the hamstring and where it was supposed to be, but wasn't, and the sciatic nerve. It is huge! I always thought that nerves were these tiny hair-like things, but this nerve is huge! It as as big around as a man's thumb. Anyway, the picture was very cool. He also showed me pictures from my first MRI which was also very cool, and pictures of the MRI from 2 weeks ago. I have been having some pretty serious lower back pain and he just wanted to make sure that I hadn't done something serious when I first hurt myself. The back pain has two causes. Since I was first hurt, I have been sitting crooked, standing crooked and walking crooked. This has caused three discs in my lower back to slip out of place and one of them is just touching the sciatic nerve. So the pain from that is causing my leg to hurt and the slipped discs are causing my back to hurt. He said we have three options. Option #1 - put me in a drug induced coma until next July or August and then when I wake up we can start rebuilding the muscles. Option #2 - Do nothing. That means that it could take another year or two before I would be "better". Option #3 - Have an epidural. He did warn me though, that even though these were commonly used on women to assist with difficult deliveries that he wanted to stress that I would NOT get a baby at the end of this. Funny man. So we decided to go with option #3. He said that I could expect one of two things. The injection would fool the nerve into not feeling the pain which would in turn assist me with the therapy and rebuilding of my hamstring muscles. OR it could do nothing and then we go with option #2. So now I just wait to hear from the anesthesiologist in Victoria who will be performing the epidural, which should be in about 2 weeks. Then possibly another 2 weeks until the shot and another 2 weeks to go back and see Dr. Gutmanis, my surgeon. As for going back to work, he doesn't even want to talk about that until he sees me again in approximately 6 weeks. AARRGG!! So I will have to content myself with sitting and doing not a whole lot. I think i will have to have a scrap-booking day at my house very soon.

PS. I wish I had the picture he showed me of my thigh cut wide open. I'd post it for all of you. BUT, I don't so I'm sorry for all of you who would like to see that. :)

4 comments:

Sue said...

I sure hope this works for you and your life can get back to normal again. As for the picture...No thanks...can't stand stuff like that.

Melanie said...

Hope things get better quickly.
And can I just say how grateful I am that you don't have that photo?! Thank heavens.

Unknown said...

A drug-induced coma?! Goodness sakes. I'm glad you aren't doing that! Can you imagine, waking up 6 months later? Oh my. I hope the epidural helps!! As for a scrapbooking day... give me some warning so I can at least get some pictures printed off.

Becky said...

If it wasn't for my kids I would be all over a coma. Sounds like fun.

And I'm with Mel, very thankful that you don't have the photo. Ang would have loved it though.

I'm so sorry that this is going on so long for you. I know what it feels like to be in constant pain with no end in sight. (At least not in the near future.) And what it's like to not be able to do the things you usually do. SO depressing. I wish I could hug you, and fix you. But I can't. So I'll just pray for you.