Another Surgery Down In The Books

Hi Everyone, I know I’ve been missing in action for the past couple of weeks but I had, once again, another surgery. It wasn’t as major as all of the others I have had but still, a surgery is a surgery. For the past couple of years my elbow has been hurting and I could never figure out why. I thought it was the overuse of pushing myself around in my wheelchair and having to transfer and such. When I had mentioned it to my oncologist a couple years back, she referred me to an orthopedic doctor. The results that came from this ortho doctor was horrendous… she said in these exact words, “do not use it.” I looked at her with shock on my eyes and literally wheeled out. How in the world, as a doctor, would you tell someone who is in a wheelchair to not use her arms?!?! It was mind blowing to me and I definitely will not forget that experience. So once again, I just sucked up the pain and went on with everything else. Finally when I had my last spinal surgery, I couldn’t use my arm at all, so a real orthopedic doctor came in and took a CT Scan of my elbow. The results came back and showed us that the experimental chemotherapy and the extensive use of medical steroids that I was on, stopped the flow of blood to my bones, ending up with, as I call them, “dead bones.” I guess everything always comes as a cost, whenever you try to fix one thing, another decides to appear. So that’s what was causing all of the pain. This ortho doctor was amazing and made me actually want to do another surgery so I can have some sort of relief, so we went ahead and scheduled it. I just knew that this was going to be difficult because that would leave me with only one functionally working limb.

So I did the surgery a few weeks ago and it was a success. Yes, I was a bit stressed because I couldn’t do anything for myself, since I was a one arm bandit, but it did relieve an enormous amount of pain.

As you know, every time I go into a hospital, the surgeons always want to keep me a night because of my complicated history, but this time I was super adamant on leaving. The surgeon realized that I wasn’t going to back down in this fight, so he released me that same day. I still had the drain attached to my arm, but I assured him that I walk with my own personal nurse, also known as my mother, who knows how to take care of these things, so he signed the discharge papers and they let us leave. Woo hoo, home sweet home!

I decided to be stubborn and not go to therapy this time, but I have been working hard at it on my own. I think I’m a pro after all the therapy I’ve been though. I’m still trying to get over the ugly scar it has left me but I guess I can think of it as a battle scar and everything I’ve had to overcome.

I’m thankful to my family and friends who have helped me make these past few weeks easier to cope with. From beautiful care packages to endless movies, I’ll never forget the simple kind gestures people took out of their time to show how much they love me. Once again, thank you guys.

(p.s. I think my pictures are too gruesome to post so I’m just decided to put a happy wrapped up arm)