Home James....

Well, I'm home....

I managed to make it home in 10 days, which wasn't bad considering how the first 6 of them went (see my earlier post, which I wrote but didn't publish at the time!). How am I? Well, I'm doing really well I think, although my natural impatience is wondering why I'm not better already and my sensible, pragmatic side is telling me that I've had major spinal surgery and I can't expect to be running any marathons any time soon!

Regarding the surgery, my consultant told me beforehand that he was going to put a cage etc in the bottom, but at the top of my original fusion, where the bone graft had failed, he was going to wait until he was in there before he decided what he would do with me. He actually said to me that it might only be 2 screws and a bit of bone graft, so because I am naturally optimistic, I thought that's just about how it would go. Yesterday I saw my xrays.....and.....um.....its not just 2 screws.... To support my failed bone graft I now have 2 extra metal rods and 10 - yes 10 screws fixing them in place on either side of my spine. My fusion extends 2-3 levels above where the original one finished and looks amazing. My original fusion always looked a bit 'wobbly' where they stopped in a hurry last time and you could see a 'lever' point around which I have been trying to bend for the past few years. Its what has added to my pain levels. That point has been fixed and smoothed out (as much as metal can smooth anything out) - it really is astounding what he has achieved. At the bottom I have 4 new screws too - taking my total from my original 8 (yes, that's all there were) to 22! The incisions on my back run fairly much from the level of my armpit to the base of my spine, with a small gap in the middle where he didn't want to cut through a bunch of scar tissue that I have there. I also had 17 staples in the incision in my tummy used for the bottom section (gruesome I know, but they went in through the front to fix a couple of those screws in) - all in all, hubby reckons about 20" of new scars.

So, for all I'm sore and taking time to do stuff, if I sit back rationally and compare this to last time, 14 screws compared to 8 and around the same amount of incision length, I feel I'm doing incredibly well. I'm older too.....which is bound to have an impact.

So, sorry for such a 'technical' post but I thought you'd like the nuts and bolts of it all (so to speak).....