Well hello, Wednesday. Another day closer to this giant surgery I’m about to undergo. At least I’m done with the pre-ops. Aaaaaalllllll the pre-ops. Seriously, people, the pre-ops alone take a ridiculous amount of time.
So let’s back up for a second. What exactly are pre-ops? Well, basically, it’s a mandatory appointment with a medical practitioner of some sort (could be your surgeon, primary care physician, a nurse, etc.), to help, in some way, prepare for a major surgery. It could be informative, telling you what to expect; it could be for the purpose of signing releases; it could be for testing, to make sure you’re physically fit for surgery, etc.
I had four official pre-ops, but let’s back up a little more here. Especially if you have multiple illnesses or issues, sometimes getting ready to address one issue, means addressing another one first. For me, that actually meant another surgery.
Many of you know of the saga of my shattered left radius, detailed here and here. Well, in not being able to use my left hand for a long time, my right took quite a beating. My right hand may be my “good” hand, but it’s not without its ongoing medical issues. I’d already had two surgeries on it. Starting in about April, I started to get some severe aching throughout the whole of my wrist. By July, I had a cyst that was both palpable and visible. Yep. It was easy to feel the cyst and move it around, and you could also see it, if you knew it was there. And it was causing nerve pain.
What does this have to do with back surgery? Well, as any of you who have had a lumbar fusion know, hands are really important in the first weeks and months after surgery. You’ll likely use a walker for 2-3 weeks, and then a cane for another several weeks. Hands also are responsible for getting you from a sitting position to a standing position. Essentially, if your hands aren’t working well, or are hurting a lot, you’re kinda screwed.
I’m already slightly screwed going into this surgery (no, that’s not a pun referring to the 10 screws holding my left radius together), because the injury to my left arm and hand has a two year recovery time. Well, I’m only seven months out, so I still have swelling and pain in my left hand, though it is slowly improving. I didn’t want to be in the position of already only having half a left hand, and then ending up with so much nerve pain in my right hand that I couldn’t walk or get up, or sit down, or lie down, or anything else with it. It’s one thing when you’re fully ambulatory, but when you’re recovering from a lumbar fusion and can’t do much of anything normally, that is the very definition of “up a creek without a paddle.”
So, I went to see Dr. Yi’s P.A., the wonderful Tim, and he ordered an MRI, and we talked about my options. Well, long story short, the MRI showed a tear in one of the hand tendons facing my right ulna. I’m what’s called “ulnar positive,” which means my ulna is actually too long for my arm. What does this mean? Well, it means that it pushes into my wrist, and, in my case, it bore a hole all the way through the middle of my tendon. Nope, not kidding. Most people get tears on the edges of their tendons, but I got one in the middle. Cause…ulna too long. I swear, my anatomy is never boring, and it’s full of surprises. I seriously should donate my corpse to science.
Tim was great, and got me in for surgery two weeks later. Which was August 22. Exactly one month and two days before my back surgery. Good thing though, it’s one of the absolute easiest surgeries I’ve ever had. Dr. Yi is also a wizard, so that helps. He let me stay awake for it, so I got to watch and ask questions. Seriously, people, if you’re anywhere near the Denver area and need hand surgery, go to In Sok Yi at Peak Orthopedics. He’s done 4 of my 6 hand surgeries at this point, and he is AMAZING.
Nearly a month out, and my hand is almost 100%. I’ll have my 6 week post-op with him when I have my 2 week post op for my back. It’s convenient having doctors in the same practice.
Hand surgery out of the way, I had to see my PCP (primary care physician), Dr. John, for an EKG, blood tests, and some general checks for inflamed organs. Everything checked out, and I was on to see the vascular surgeon whose office is all the way in THORNTON. For you non-Colorado people, I live in Parker, which is the Southeast corner of the Denver metro area. Thornton is the Northwest corner, and a good 45 minutes without traffic. Ashley took me to the appointment, and Dr. Georgescu checked the pulses in my feet, and then explained the surgery from his perspective. Holy crap.
I had gotten a CT scan in order to give him a good picture of the anatomy of my lower abdomen, and now I know why. While he does have to move all of my bowels out of the way for Dr. McPherson, he’s also going to have to actually move my aorta and inferior vena cava as well. For most people, those dissect at L4, and go to the legs. But in 20% of people, it’s at the L5. I’m one of the lucky ones. So what are these things? Well one is the body’s main artery and one is the body’s main blood vessel. They’re responsible for moving the entire body’s blood supply to and from the heart. And a person’s entire blood supply goes through the two roughly three times in a single minute. So in a nutshell? If one ruptures, I’m dead. If it punctures, it’s just a blood transfusion, but a much longer hospital stay. Thankfully, either is exceedingly unlikely. But still, holy crap.
My third pre-op was at the hospital, where a nurse asked me alllll sorts of questions, and put all my meds on file. They also swabbed my nose for staph. Which is always fun. And then she gave me my fun decolonizing cloths, and the prescription for my antibiotic nose ointment to kill any staph in my nose.
Finally, on Monday, I had my pre-op with Chanel, Dr. McPherson’s PA. I love her to death, she’s awesome. She just had me sign some papers, and answered some questions I had specific to this particular surgery.
So here we are. I’m now set. All appointments done, and ready to go. Now all I have to do is focus on my personal stuff I need to get done, which is still plenty!
What have your pre-ops looked like? Have they been similar? Different? Let me know in the comments!
Dauntless In Denver 