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basement to look for this tool--lucky for me the hospital never gets rid of any type of medical tool--no matter how outdated.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!