A Diagnosis At Last!
After nearly three months of pain and suffering following a bad fall from my horse on Labor Day, I have learned that I have a fractured vertebrae! My physical therapist team and I decided over a week ago that something more was going on with me other than just a severe contusion of my lower back. The P.T. phoned the orthopedic doctor and insisted that I have an MRI done. So, last Tuesday, that's what I did. They gave the films to me to hand-carry to the doctor on Thursday. Having had a lumbar fracture back in 1988, I can read an MRI with the best of them and I could clearly see that something was terribly wrong. I phoned the orthopedic practice and told them that instead of seeing the doctor who had been "overseeing" my physical therapy, I wanted to see one of their spine specialists. So, with that arranged, on Thursday morning I had my first meeting with Dr. Michael Dabbah.He was aghast to see the obvious fracture of L-2 vertebra -- just one below the one I had fractured 20 years ago.Well, let me tell you -- medicine has changed for the better in the last 20 years. Before, I was in the hospital for 11 days, cut stem to stern and limped home with my back full of hardware and about 100 surgical staples in my back and across my left hip where they dug out bone for the grafting of my spine. Ended up with 7 fused vertebrae and it took almost a year to resume full activities.NOW the procedure takes about an hour and a half and can be done with a local anesthetic! Its called a "Balloon Kyloplasty" and requires two 1 cm incisions on either side of my spine. They insert a tube which inflates the vertebrae to normal height and then use a syringe to fill the space with some kind of cement. Voila! You're done and you come home the same day with two waterproof bandaids on the incisions. In two weeks, you're back to normal activity. Amazing!The pre-op stuff on Friday was a little daunting, though. First I went to my internist just for the routine stuff -- but I was having a lot of referred pain that just wouldn't quit. My blood pressure was spiking because of it, but then she did an EKG on me and that was also "irregular." Since I have to pass the EKG test to have surgery, she sent me upstairs to the cardiologist. What a wonderful, kind man he was! Well, my EKG was still irregular and he said "I need to do an echocardiogram on you to make sure you haven't had a heart attack at some point." Well, that about set me on my ear. I told him "I had a heart BREAK about three years ago, but to the best of my knowledge, I've never had a heart attack." I had to come back at 2:00 for the test.When it was over, I said to the doc "You're not going to make me wait until Monday to tell me the results are you?" He said, No, and went to consult with the technician who had done the test. He came out a few minutes later and said, "There is no evidence of a heart attack. Please be here at 8:30 Monday morning so we can do the stress test. Then you will be cleared for surgery."I have to do the passive stress test because of the fracture in my spine. This is where you just lie down and they give you some medicine that speeds up your heart. I think I'll do fine for that. All I know is that I want to get this surgery done asap so I can get back to normal life. I know I will still be looking at more physical therapy because I have lost so much strength and muscle tone over the last three months. I have also gained about 10 pounds from inactivity and I feel like Miss Piggy. But my doc assures me that it will be easy to lose once I can get my strength back.So...that's what's happening in my life right now. Tom has been wonderfully supportive and has been picking up all the slack around here. I usually insist on taking care of my horses myself, but he's gotten really good at it and hasn't stopped with his list of home improvements, cooking and generally making me feel special. This is the most wonderful time of my life and this accident was just a real inconvenience.He and my best friend Lisa are going to cook Thanksgiving dinner here on Thursday. The doctor said I will be up and around and just fine, but that I can't lift the turkey! Haha! We still have to finish getting the leaves off the yard out here, but they are pretty dry and crunchy at this point so they should blow fairly easily.Cold here again today...still 20 degrees and it's almost 9 a.m. But so much to be thankful for this year. Good health. A good man. Good friends. and a much better life than I lived for so many years with a selfish, ungrateful man who didn't respect me.
Replies