Things Are a Changing!

Not only has the weather and season changed once again but I am too. I am finally off all medication associated with my leg saga. No more pain meds, and no more anti-biotics! This means my little red car and I are reunited--and it never felt so good!!!!

I have decided to leave good old Bellingham. I am going back to SHOES-n-FEET in Federal Way to pursue my passion. I still have a lot of physical therapy to do but I am making progress slowly but surly! My energy levels are still lacking but I have noticed an increase in my stamina. Again I am making little steps of improvement but improvement none-the-less!

I am looking for a home to call my own and will up date with pictures as soon as I have made some kind of decision!

Thanks to all who have given your love and support to me during this trying past two years! I could have not done this all without you!

Surgery Number 13--A scar revision

I am sad to report that I had surgery #13. The up side is that it was outpatient and it was the quickest surgery I have ever had! It was called a "scar revision." The skin graft and the muscle flap was not healing like it should have been. There was just too much tissue flapping over the skin graft edge preventing the appropriate healing. So, my great plastics doc revised the scar. I think it is a hoot how the docs all talk about having to revise my scar as if they are talking about editing a paragraph in a thesis. In any case just as I had started intensive physical therapy I am benched again. This makes me frustrated! But the stitches should be out before my birthday in February so only a few weeks of twiddling my thumbs. My energy level suck, so at least this will give me more time to recoup those lovely red blood cells I am lacking. If only chewing on rusty nails worked!

Yep, two boots!

Look at me... I am wearing two shoes--well boots. I treated myself--might as well protect my lovely new scars and cover them all up while I am at it too! It is truly weird to be walking on two feet again! I am re-learning how to use my right leg which is also shorter than my left, so my stride is less strideful and more gimpy. At this point I don't care! I am just thrilled to be able to wear pants and socks that are not anklets! Now, I am able to ware skirts because I want to not because I have to. Isn't life grand?

Pieces of the past and hope for the future

I found these pictures on my camera and thought I would load them up on the blog. The VAC is the machine in the middle and the right photo is what really saved my life. VAC stands for Vacuum Assisted Closure--it sucked out the bad stuff and helped to regenerate good healthy tissue. Look at the last time my right ankle looked normal! At least there is proof.

Big City Hospitals

I am now wire, bolt and external metal free. I do have four pins and a rod in my right leg but it is on the inside!!! Sadly I am still non-weight bearing but I am metal free!

I had surgery on October 28th. I was to stay in the hospital around 15 days because of how extensive the surgery was. It was originally estimated that the surgery would last 12+ hours. This was because it was really two surgeries with two sets of surgeons--the orthopedic surgeon docs and the plastic surgeon docs.

The orthopedic docs were going to be the first in to take out the anti-biotic encased nail out of the inner shaft of my tibia. Set my tibia and bolt it together with four screws and a brand new non-infected rod (unlike my original). The warned me that they might have to re-break both my tibia and possibly my fibula to make things straight. Lucky for me the were in and out in a little over two hours and I didn't need to have anything broken--again.

The next phase of the surgery was to move/flap muscle from the side of my leg to the top of my leg. That was the easy surgery that would take around 8 hours--if I was lucky. If I wasn't lucky I would have muscle from my back removed and then attached at the lower part of my right leg's artery and flapped on top of my tibia at the worst of the break sites. Again luck was on my side and the docs were able to do the easier of the two surgeries and I was out of the OR in less than 10 hours. So, my Peroneus muscle is no longer on the lateral side/outside of my right leg but instead on top of my tibia. To my family's relief the surgery was a lot shorter than everyone expected and yet still the longest of all my 11 surgeries. Sadly I lost a lot of blood in the process of it all. I lost enough blood to warrant another transfusion of 2 units of blood.

Since Harbourview is a teaching hospital I had a lot of teams of students coming around to check on me. I did not complain nor mind about the nice eye candy that were always checking in on me either! The infectious disease team were the actual ones who found that I had a heart murmur. As if I did not have enough to worry about! I was reassured my heart murmur was all do to the loss of blood and quieted down once I received the transfusion. Just to be on the safe side I did have a Echo Cardiogram. It was really interesting to see and hear my heart pumping away on a computer monitor!

I am truly blessed to have such awesome friends and family members that came out of the woodwork to come visit me! Thank you to all that did visit me while I was in Seattle--you know who you are. You are truly stellar people to put up w/the ickiness of the hospital with all my tubing, blood and guts! When you were there my pain was minimized and time went by more quickly. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!

Even though I had awesome care from exceptional doctors I was not impressed with the nursing staff at Harbourview! Thank goodness I had two exceptional nurses when I was in the worst of pain! My favorite nurse was a huge Samoan gentleman w/the nickname of "Mother." He got the nickname for mothering his patients and being quite the "Mother F...er" if anyone messed w/his patients. Not only did he provide excellent care he kept my spirits up and was a hoot and a half! There was also a sweet little nurse that always checked in on me those first really painful days. Sadly her name escapes my memory.

Tragically beyond those two angels the nursing staff at Harbourview left a lot to be desired! It got to be kinda game/sad joke between my family and I about how long it would take someone to come and answer my call for assistance. We would make bets as to the time and I would time them w/my handy-dandy timer watch. If my two angels were not on it took a minimum of 11 minutes to get someone to help me. This is not very comforting if you think about needing help to get to the bathroom and have to wait a LONG time with a very little bladder! Now I am completely sympathetic to busy nurses! The crux of it was that I had a direct line of sight into the nurses station and saw a lot more socialization than willingness much less any sort of rushing to help a patient. The nurses in Mexico who were afraid of me and did not speak English nor understood my sad Spanish were 1000 times more attentive than those at in the big city hospital! It boggles my mind even today! I am going to make a point of going back to St. Joes and thank the nurses that cared for me there! Needless to say I was anxious to get out of there! So much so that I begged the docs to let me go home early. After only 8 days in the hospital and a lot of begging on my part I was on my way home to good ole' Bellingham. I have never been so glad to see my own bed!

So, a lot of rest is on my list of activities--and not like I have a lot of energy for much of anything else either. Six weeks and the stitches will be out and I might even be walking on my own two feet.

Good News--and yes I am wearing pants

Despite having to stay in the hospital for SIX WHOLE DAYS I returned home safe and sound where I proceeded to sleep the rest of the week away. Sadly, it was only an issue of paperwork that kept me in two more days than needed.

Bless my mother's heart but she isn't the greatest of cooks (she hates it and fully admits she isn't proficient but she is the one that did keep the family alive). After the third day of hospital food mom's cooking looked really good! Which I suppose is both a good and bad point all in one. :)

There were a couple of reasons why I was so overly the top exhausted. The surgery was suppose to last two to three hours, four hours at the top. My surgery lasted an unusual six hours. Turns out that while I can't seem to fill in bone at my fracture sites I sure can grow bone to fill in the space left empty by the half pins I have had changed around. I have had to have quite a few half pin revisions--one, two or all the half pins at every surgery since the Taylor Spacial Frame (TSF) was attached. I have had 7 surgeries with the TSF attached. Where each half pin that was taken out quickly and efficiently filled in with good hard bone. So, when the docs went to clear out the center cavity of my tibia the Medullary Cavity, they kept running into road blocks. Because of how dense this bone was the medical team went through three drills and every single bit in the hospital until Dr. T remembered a rather archaic procedure using some special but old tool. People were sent down into the hospital's basement to look for this tool--lucky for me the hospital never gets rid of any type of medical tool--no matter how outdated. So, I had a really long surgery and the medications used to keep me under make me feel awful but to make maters worse I unfortunately lost a lot of blood. The good news is that blood transfusions are really safe nowadays and especially safe in the state of Washington! In fact if you have to have a blood transfusion Washington state is the safest place to have one done.

So for the next six weeks I am to be completely non-weight bearing (*big huge sigh*). The up side is that everyone is a lot safer with me using the walker than a set of crutches and I will beef up those arm muscles a bit too. The other good news is that the old TSF is off and now an Izzie frame or more formally known as an Ilizarov external fixation device. I can wear my velvet pants now--yippee! The rod that Medullary Cavity is just a wire encased in anti-biotic infused cement. The wire is a delivery system and stability not weight bearing which is why the walker and I are once again pared. So, if all goes well the anti-biotic rod is at this very moment whipping out all the big bad bugs that are preventing my bone from healing. Who knows I may be waking before 2009--what a Christmas gift that would be!

"God Willing"

Have you ever come across a plaque that says,

"Good Morning! This is God.

I will be handling all of your problems today.

I do not need your help.

So have a good day!"

I was reminded of that statement/quote/saying by the following UCC's Stillspeaking Daily Devotional Newsletter. Every morning I get a devotional. These quick little reads are more than insightful and even personal! Interesting how this edition is on the same day of my surgery. Yet again I am humbled and reminded that it is in God's hands and God Willing this surgery will work. If not there is another path, journey and/or plan for me. The ever "event/gift/package seeking peek-er" in me wants to know NOW the answer to "What has God got up God's sleeves for me?". So, God it is in your plans & I trust you will see me safely to where I need to go. So, without ado here is the devotional for 9/25/08.

Home: i.UCC Community: Newsletter
Thursday, September 25, 2008 What Tomorrow Will Bring
Bible Excerpt from James 4:11-16


You who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money." Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, "If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that."

Reflection by Anthony B. Robinson

I've just moved to Toronto for the year to, as James puts it, "do business and make money." Not much money as I am teaching at a seminary. I am trying to imagine how people might have heard it if every time in recent months that I had talked about these plans and changes, I had said, "If the Lord wills it," or "God willing," or "It's really in God's hands." I suspect I would have felt a little showy, overly pious, and maybe phony. Moreover, I imagine that a fair number of those with whom I spoke would have thought the same--that is, if they weren't wondering if I were in need of a psychiatric evaluation! We tend to think we're in charge, in control.

But however odd it may sound in the ears of a secular age, James strikes me as closer to the truth. Our illusions of control are just that: illusions. Maybe it's the people who think they are in charge of life that need the psychiatric evaluation or attitude adjustment? And life has a way of giving us those little evaluations, those attitude adjustments. Which is not to say that we shouldn't make plans or have our projects. We do and we should. And yet we don't, can't, know what tomorrow will bring. The only thing we can know for sure is that God's grace will uphold us, God's wisdom will guide us, and God's peace shall keep us. And knowing that is enough.

Prayer
When you challenge my foolish idea that I am in charge, when you send your attitude adjustments, grant me grace to receive them graciously and learn that you are God, not me. Amen.

About the Author:
Anthony B. Robinson, UCC pastor, speaker and author, teaches leadership at Emmanuel College at the University of Toronto. His newest book is Changing the Conversation: A Third Way for Congregations.



The Stillspeaking Daily Devotional is a free service and is supported by your gifts to Our Church's Wider Mission. Scripture quotations are from New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America, adapted. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Happy Birthday taller little sister. It did not bother me when I turned 30. Yet having my sister turn 30 bothers me. I suppose that while she was in her 20s I still had my foot in the proverbial door of young adult. Now we both have to be grown-up.