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1 week Post Op from Minimally Invasive Spinal Fusion L5/S1

30 Jun

Hello all – I thought I would post an update to my surgery. First a refresher…

Went in Monday 6/22/09 to Duke Univ. Hospital for a L5/S1 fusion. The n-surg did two 2.5 inch cuts in my back and did a minimally invasive fusion. He cut off 1 facet and ground it up to use as an autograft. It was put in a cage and put in where the L5/S1 disc had been. He then secured it with rods and screws. They used glue, no stitches.

The first few days were HELL! It would have been a lot better if I had some nurses to help in the hospital but I got no help and no pain relief (see other posts for details on how that got screwed up).

I spent just 1 night in the hospital and welcomed coming home so that I could get my pain under control and get some help.
Once home, I went to see my primary care doctor to get a good routine for pain meds. I am on Oxycontin 30 mg, twice per day for long term pain control. I have Percocet (10 mg) for breakthrough pain and Tramadol as well. Yesterday, I made it through with just the Oxycontin and tramodal without needing any extra Percocets.
I also had arm pain (near my bicep) – a big red splotch, very sore when I moved my arm, and kind of hard. I went to the doctor who sent me to the hospital for a sonogram. They found superficial blood clot and inflamed vein. I was given antibiotics for infection, told to take 600 mg. of Motrin 3X per day (even though normally I would not be allowed to because of the fusion), and told to put heat on it. It is somewhat better today.
The one week mark came with a definite improvement in overall pain. My incisions look great and I am moving more easily. My back is sore but overall – I feel so much improved. I still can’t tell if the surgery was successful at reducing my pre-surgery pain for severe Degenerative Disc Disease or not.
I am walking every day. Yesterday was my first walk of any significant length, I went about 1/2 + mile. Today, I am going to the gym and trying the treadmill so that I can see how much I can tolerate. My legs are sore but I have a massage chair at home that will massage my legs and that has been very helpful to get the blood flowing better through my legs.

It did take me 7 days before I had my first BM post surgery and it was very difficult. I feel like I didn’t have any muscle strength in that area. I am still a far way away from being back to normal in that area but I am happy that at least I started feeling the need to go again!
If you have any comments or questions, I would love to hear them!

 
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Video Diary Spinal Fusion – Part 1 – on YouTube

25 Jun

You can view my video diary on YouTube at:

 
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Spinal Fusion at L5/S1 – Part 1

25 Jun

Early Monday morning, we left for Duke Hospital.  I was brought into the preop area where I met with a variety of doctors.  They did an IV.  This time I asked for no Lidocane as the Lidcane was worse than the IV last time.  It stung a little bit but not too bad.  Then it was just time to wait.  Of course, lying in bed like that was painful and I was anxious.  Dr. Isaacs came by and wrote on my back to mark out the surgical areas.

Finally, they put the mask on and I was out in about 2 seconds, maybe less.  They went to Joe to report on status periodically during the time.  I think the surgical time was about 2 hours although I was back there about 4 hours between getting ready and an hour to get me awake.

I don’t remember much waking up.  I know I was crying out in pain and asking for drugs and then falling back to sleep within seconds.

The first thing I remember was being in my room.  I could not stay in one position for very long (and lying on my back was not even an option) so Joe kept helping me to slide from side to side by pulling on a medical pad that was underneath me.

The evening nurse was great and so very helpful but she had to leave at 7 pm and Joe left slightly before that to go home and take care of the kids.  From then on, I was on my own!  The next 2 nurse shifts I got were useless.  They didn’t help me or check in on my.  I told one that I was going to throw up so she is puttering around looking for a bedpan and I said, “I am going to throw up NOW.”  She pushed the waste bucket towards me and I vomited a lot.  The nurse decided it was from the pain meds, so she decided not to give me any more oral meds and just give me my “breakthrough” morphine that was order.    Of course that was not enough to touch pain.  I also had so much IV fluid that I had to get up and use the bathroom every 1.5 hours – nurses were too busy to help!  It was horrible, getting in and out of bed.  I couldn’t stay in one position for long, so I was trying to roll over from one side to another or switched out with the car -  which is too hard to use as a single person who just had back surgery.  The bed was an airmattress and constantly deflating so I had no support for turning or getting in and out of the bed and all this with very little pain meds to control my pain.

The next morning, the new nurse was even worse.  She had a attitude that she knew what was best for me despite what the doctors or what I said.  They made me keep track of the frequency of the pain meds, so I would have to ask for them every 2-3 hours and then she would give me attitude about taking so much even though my doctor told me to stay ahead of the pain.  Someone screwed up my breakfast and I didn’t get any food until 9:15 am.  I asked for some crackers and got “the last one” with the read between the lines – and we won’t go find anymore.

I really could go on and on about the nurse care I received, it was really bad.  My whole situation could have been so much easier to deal with if I had someone compassionate and helpful like I did until 7 pm.  I had to ask the to empty the toilet measuring device so that I could pee the next time without it overflowing (it was clear that I was peeing just fine – but they refused to take it out) and I would get attitude that they were annoyed with me for asking for the few things that I had to ask for – even though I should have gotten help with so many other things.

I started to push for discharge as soon as I awoke the next morning since I knew that I needed to be on a healthy regime in order to get better with consistent pain control and help for getting up and down before I ended up falling and hurting myself.  The surgeon came in to talk with me and was also appalled at the lack of care and he said that I just needed to get an xray and then I could go home.  They brought me down for xray but then said they didn’t have discharge papers.  The intern wrote up discharge papers and of course he wrote for a different set of drugs than what my surgeon had told me to take.  I was just happy to get out of there though.

Getting in the car was quite painful.  The ride was okay until about the last 10 minutes or so.  I went to sleep once we got home and took pain pills on a schedule, used a lot of ice.  Moving was still very difficult but I had some periods when I wouldn’t move and was more comfortable.  More to come as I feel better and can write more.

 
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All About Spelling

13 Jun

All About Spelling Program

Link:  All About Spelling Page

Schools have gotten lazy about teaching spelling these days.  Many of the spelling programs start off teaching some basic phonics but reach a point where they just “assign” spelling words and expect children to memorize the spelling, do some worksheets, and pass their spelling tests each week.  Lots of children cannot learn this way and as they get behind in spelling, the teachers just push them further ahead as a group instead of back-tracking and really “TEACHING” children how to spell.

When we began to have these troubles with our 8 year old son, we realized he was failing his spelling tests in the third grade and couldn’t spell words he should have gotten in the second grade.  He had no strategies being taught and was just expected to memorize the words.  As an educator myself, I researched to find the best spelling program available that would use a multi-sensory approach, teach rules and strategies, and build a foundation in spelling.  I found this in the All-About-Spelling Curriculum.

The first day I read through the program, I realized there were things I didn’t even know about spelling.  When in school, I was taught that the “magic or silent” E would make a vowel say it’s name as in the word “time.”  AAS teaches other uses of the “magic E” – for instance, it is used to make the g say it’s soft sound in a word like “large,” it also stops a word from ending in a u or a v, like “twelve.”  Did you know that English words do not ever end in a v or u?  Lots of these concepts are taught in a comprehensive, multi-sensory approach to spelling.

Please click on the affiliate link above as we will get funs to continue to support the time needed to find and research the best curriculum programs if you use our link and choose to purchase the program.

 
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Lasik Eye Surgery

13 Jun

2005

Today was the day of my Lasik surgery procedure. Before I begin to discuss today’s events let me share what led me to decide on Lasik. I started wearing glasses at age 15 and quickly switched to contacts because I didn’t care for glasses. My eyesight would get a little worse each year. By the time of surgery, it was at -3.75 and -4 for each of my eyes. I was very nearsighted although I know that my poor eyesight falls in the more moderate range than severe. Still, I couldn’t see or read anything in front of me unless I was on top of it.

I had wanted to get Lasik done but the cost was the main reason why I didn’t pursue it. The procedure itself seemed quite daunting. The thought of someone working on my eyes was nerve-wracking but I chose to think of the outcome and not focus on the procedure. I asked around and found every single person who had the procedure done was thrilled and raved about it. Most said the procedure wasn’t bad at all and the end results were fantastic.

I didn’t do too much research on doctors; I used the one whom my insurance gave a discount for. In the office, however, I was very impressed with Dr. Dornic at the Laser Eye Center in Cary. I read all of his patient reviews while waiting for my consultation and everyone had wonderful things to say about the doctor so I felt very good about that.

The initial consultation was free. They took some pictures of my eyes and measured the strength of my glasses. The doctor looked in my eyes and told me that I was a candidate for regular Lasik and Custom, or Wavefront, Lasik. Regular Lasik was cheaper – at $1249 per eye with the insurance discount. It boasted an 85% chance of 20/20 vision. It used your accounts of lenses to determine how to shape your eye. Basically it is done the same way they determine what prescription lens to use. The custom approach is more expensive at $1649 per eye. It uses a machine to determine how to laser your eyes. It gives a much more accurate picture of your eye and therefore the adjustments made are more precise leading to better vision. They boast a 98% chance of 20/20 vision or better with a high probability of improved night vision as well.

Since I was already paying for the procedure, I decided that I might as well pay for the best and chose the Wavefront approach. The office scheduled a pre-op appointment for me and told me to stop wearing contacts for a week before the appointment. It was terrible having to wear glasses for a week when you are not used to it. The pre-op appointment was no different than a regular eye doctor examination. It took about an hour and they had to dilate my eyes.

The next morning I arrived for my procedure. I signed some consent forms and made a down payment for services. Next I was given 5 mg of Valium and some antibiotic eye drops. After 15 minutes I felt nothing from the Valium so they gave me an additional 5-mg. To be honest, it still didn’t have that much affect. I was a little more relaxed but I didn’t feel drugged in any way. They did a total of 3 sets of the antibiotic drops and I headed into the laser room.

They showed me what the sound of the laser would be like and told me what was going to happen. They gave me a stuffed monkey to hold onto during the procedure – it was kind of funny at first but in the end I was glad to have the monkey! They taped one of my eyes with a black shield so I couldn’t see out of that eye. Next they taped my upper and lower eyelashes on the eye they are going to work on. They gave me numbing drops in my eye and finally put the eye speculum in to hold my eye open. I was really worried about that part but it wasn’t bothersome at all. They put more drops in to wash out my eye and then put this suction cup on my eye. I felt pressure and it was weird but it really wasn’t bad. When they do that, however you totally lose your vision until you can kind of make out this blinking orange light that you are supposed to look at.

The next step is to cut into your eye to make a flap. This was where I was glad to have the monkey. I guess my eye wasn’t as numb as it should have been and it hurt (and I was squeezing George the Monkey) – not like labor pains or anything but it wasn’t fun either. Luckily it was only for a few seconds. The next part is weird, the doctor lifts up the flap and suddenly everything is really blurry and strange looking. The laser then starts and I could actually smell my eye being burned away. The laser doesn’t hurt at all. It only takes about a minute tops and then they put the flap back down and you can see again. At this time the doctor sponges your flap to smooth it out and lets it air dry for 2 minutes. One eye is done!

For the next eye the procedure was the same but I was nervous because of the pain I felt during the slicing of my first eye. After the numbing drops, the doctor was touching my eye and I could feel it – I began thinking – okay if I can feel him now (which I couldn’t with the last eye) what is it going to be like when he slices the eye. So, I spoke up and they put more drops in. That turned out to be great, as I didn’t feel the pain with the slicing this time. The second eye was much easier since I had been through it and knew what to expect plus I didn’t have the pain that I had with the first eye.

Despite the few seconds of pain – I would do it all again in a heartbeat – it isn’t even supposed to hurt – they just didn’t get my eye numb enough. So, if you are considering the procedure – don’t let my experience convince you not to do it – it wasn’t that big of a deal. I had more pain closing a door on my finger than during the procedure and that pain lasted a lot longer!

After the procedure, they moved me to an exam room and put some more drops to lubricate my corneas and told me to keep my eyes closed. The doctor checked my flap and then did another laser patient. After that patient, he checked my flap again and gave me more drops. By now my eyes were burning so they gave me more numbing drops. They taped plastic shields to my eyes and gave me sunglasses to wear over them and sent me home.

Joe drove me home and I went to bed. I would have thought after all that and 2 Valium I would be tired but I wasn’t. The burning in my eyes kept getting worse and worse and I will admit it was very uncomfortable. I was also tearing a lot and that was uncomfortable too. Any light made the tearing worse. So I ended up taking an Ambien, 2 Tylenol, 2 Motrin, and putting 2 bandannas over my eyes to keep all the light out. I finally got knocked out and slept for about 5 hours. When I woke up I felt a ton better. The burning was gone and the tearing was less. I could take off the bandannas and glasses and walk around. My eyesight immediately after surgery was still quite blurry – although less blurry than when I was without contacts or glasses. As the day has gone on, it is without a doubt improving. I took another nap this evening and again woke feeling even better. I can obviously see to type this, can read the guide on the TV, and can see things fairly clearly even with these shields on my eyes. I am anxious to wake up tomorrow and take them off. The pain is gone, I feel very mild scratchiness and they feel somewhat dry but overall I am doing really well.

Tomorrow I start using drops three times a day and have my post op visit with the doctor to check my vision. If you are considering Lasik surgery, I would have to say - do it! I think I am going to be really happy with the results.

One Day Post-Op: I woke up and took the shields off. My eyesight was very good. It did vary some during the day – sometimes it was very clear, other times a little blurry. They didn’t really hurt at all but they did feel tired and it helped to rest my eyes throughout the day. I went to see the doctor and he said my flap was healing fine and my vision was 20/20 in one eye and 20/25 in the other eye – with both eyes I was seeing 20/20. The doctor said that my eyesight will continue to get better as my eyes heal. The ‘side effects’ I have are: 1) the variation in my eyesight throughout the day 2) I can’t read really close up right now, I have to hold the paper back a little bit 3) I do see the halos around lights at night and 4) Occasionally, my eyes will burn a little or feel dry. Still all of the above is minimal and I am told that they will go away. I am thrilled with the results. I see the doctor again at 6 days post-op.

One Week Post-Op: My eyes are healing good. I have less fluctuation in my eyesight. I am still seeing 20/20 with slight nearsightedness of -.5 in each eye. I asked about the fact that seeing things close up is still difficult and here was what the doctor said – since I wasn’t using the muscles in my eyes before for reading (the nearsightedness compensated for that)the eye muscles didn’t develop. So now that I don’t have the nearsightedness anymore, I will need to develop the muscles in my eyes. As that happens my ability to see close up will improve. He said 1-6 months. He also said the same time frame for the halos at night to go away. So the few “problems” I am having are common and will go away. He did say that after 40, people are not usually able to develop the muscles due to aging but I shouldn’t have a problem at 36.

One Month Post-Op: It has been one month since my surgery. My eyes are great! I saw the doctor today and I have 20/20 in both eyes. He checked my ‘nearsightedness’ that was at -.5 last time and it was at 0 today – perfect eyesight! I can now read close up without any problems except for ultra tiny print. The halos are going away. I don’t do drops except 3 times a day and my eyes don’t really feel that dry. The surgery was a total success. I am enjoying the freedom of not having to worry about contacts or glasses. It is amazing!

 
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Chinese Character Test

13 Jun

我爱我的妈妈。

这是我的爸爸。

我有三哥哥。

我有两小猫。

我有一大句。

我的大句像吃鸡肉。

小猫也像吃鸡肉。

I am teaching my six year old daughter Chinese and wanted to test to see if the words we are working on will show up well on a blog post.

**Worked good on my computer!  Although it might now work on computers that don’t have the Chinese Characters Enabled.

 
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Hysterecotomy

13 Jun

My Tale of a Laparoscopic Hysterectomy – October 2008

Let’s start off from the beginning.  I started having VERY (and I won’t be graphic but I mean VERY) heavy periods and bad cramping.  I went to a local GYN doctor and he examined me, did a pap and ordered an ultrasound and endometrial biopsy.  From the exam he said my uterus seemed a bit enlarged.  The ultrasound showed 1 small fibroid (probably not the cause of my bleeding) and a thickened endometrial lining.  After much reading on the internet, I was told by MANY women that an in-office (with just Motrin for pain) endometrial biopsy was EXCRUTIATING.  I told the doctor that I just couldn’t do it awake.  He told me that my pap had come back abnormal so he would refer me to a GYN Oncologist anyway.

At GYN Oncology, I was examined again and got conflicting information from the 2 doctors – but she did agree to do a cervical biopsy (for the abnormal pap), a D&C (and get my endometrial biopsy that way), and a hysteroscopy (looking inside the uterus with a camera) under general anesthesia and then we would proceed from there.

I  went to same day surgery for that and tolerated things very well.  The worst was that the anesthesia guy couldn’t do an IV to save his life.  It took 4 attempts with Lidocane that was quite painful.  Post surgery, I woke up nicely, bleeding was minimal, and I went home.  I was up and about within a couple days, just taking it easy.

The pathology results came in and all was clear of cancer!  Thank God!  So, the doctor referred me back to a regular (but different – I wasn’t going back to doctor #1 as he was terrible) GYN doctor.  I chose to cancel that and go see my GYN doctor from 12 years ago because she is the most amazing person and doctor.  She had delivered my 12 year old son back when she was doing both OB and GYN.

She told me all of my options:  Birth control pills, Depo Provera shots, IUD, ablation, and hysterectomy.  I gave it a lot of thought and decided that the hysterectomy was the best choice for me as it was a guarantee to fix my problems, the other solutions may or may not have worked and I did not want to be back dealing with all of this again in a year.

We scheduled the surgery quickly.  Two days prior to surgery I had to do a bowel prep.  I drank Magnesium Citrate (Cherry).  The dose said 6.5-10 oz for an adult.  I went with the 6.5 oz.  The stuff was nasty and one more sip would have made it all come up.  It took 7 hours to work and I went about 15 times (didn’t get sore but did use baby wipes).  I was on an all liquid diet at this point too.  The next morning I had 2 more episodes of diarrhea.  I didn’t eat much that day just 1 milkshake and  a bowl of cream of chicken soup broth.  I took 2 days of antibiotics and 4 days of acidophilus.

We got up at 4:30 am to leave at 5:00 so we would be at the hospital at 5:30am.  We then waited without much interaction from the hospital staff for 2 hours.  I did get an IV (one stick, yeah) during that time.  I had a terrible headache from not eating so they let me take 2 Tylenol with a sip of water.  It helped a lot.

Finally they came in at 7:30 and gave me a dose of “happy meds” in my IV.  I don’t remember anything after that until I woke up.  Waking up was HARD.  My incision site was VERY painful.  I remember asking for pain meds and going back to sleep.  Apparently they want you to breathe while sleeping though – which apparently I was not doing.  The nurse said no more IV pain meds until I could remember to breathe!  I tried and was somewhat more successful.

Once I got stabilized with pain meds, I was still very sore but better.  I had to go to the bathroom (the cath was taken out before I woke).  The first bathroom trip was in a wheel chair, painful, and not too rewarding (just a small amount that burned when it came out.)  I felt very weak and sore after the trip.

I got back and bed and kept dozing off.  My throat was very sore from being intubated.  I asked for a popsicle and felt much better after having one.  The sugar and the cold was helpful.  That was when things started getting better for me.  It was slow but now that I was on top of the pain meds, the sharp pains in my incisions weren’t as bad.  I had one bout of feeling like I would throw up but that quickly passed once I was lying down in my bed.  I had to use the bathroom again and  had a nice “normal” event and “passed” my tests including walking to the bathroom.

The nurse wanted to start me on oral pain meds but wanted me to eat a cracker or two first.  She gave me a package of Graham Crackers.  The problem was that my mouth was SOOOOO dry (I had a patch of med behind my ear to also help with nausea and it makes your mouth turn into Cotton Mouth) that I couldn’t eat the cracker with a sip of liquid for each bite.  I finally got the cracker down and she gave me liquid Lortab (ughhh, nasty tasting stuff!).    Once that kicked in, I felt really good, only mildly sore.  I walked to the bathroom a third time (they used up 3 liters of IV solution!) and did well.  I told them I was ready to go home.

My doctor came and talked to me.  She said my uterus was quite large and she thought I was going to feel so much better once I healed.

At 1:30 pm (6 hours from start to discharge) we went home.  I was comfortable on the way home but did have to stop once to use a bathroom AGAIN!!!  They told me to stay on top of the pain pills (taking Percocet) and the nausea meds.  We got home at 2 pm, I took 1 nausea pill and by 3 pm I was in a lot of pain from the incision site again – I was supposed to wait until 4:30 for the pain pills but couldn’t do it and took it early.  I have been doing great since.  I haven’t even had to nap.  Just typing on the computer, talking to my kids, and still going to the bathroom a TON.  There is no bleeding (a tiny bit of brown discharge sometimes).  I have 3 incisions.  One is in my belly button and one on either side.  The left side is the one that hurts, it is bigger (about 2 inches) and is where they had to take the uterus out from.  She did my LEEP, removing a cone of tissue from my cervix and stitched it up.  I weigh 6 pounds more than I did this morning when I weighed myself, all water weight.  I am hungry, awake, and in no pain as long a I don’t move a lot and stay on the pain pills.  My doctor said that Thursday and Friday will be harder days as my insides “wake up” from the anesthesia.

 
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Hello world!

11 Jun

Hi, I am Lynne.  I am a 40 (although prefer to tell people I am 38) year old woman living in North Carolina.  I have a husband, Joe, who works for Google.  My oldest son, Christopher, is 15 and going to be a sophomore in high school this fall.  He has started his own business and I plan to blog about his games.  He taught himself how to program and learned the ways of promoting and earning money for his games.  He has been very successful and makes more money than most 15 year olds dream about!  My 13 year old is Austin, my 9 year old is Reilly, and my 6 year old daughter (who is adopted from Chongqing, China) is Caden.  I own and operate a Learning Center in Apex:  www.apexlearningcenter.com and am very interested in promoting mathematics education.  I am also teaching myself Chinese and manage more rental properties than I care too ;-)

 
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