Put One Foot in Front of the Other...

My surgery went well today. Here's a new x-ray of my ankle. If you look closely, you can see the white "shadow" of where the pin was.

It's been tricky, feeling all of this hardware in my ankle. Literally, I could reach down and feel the head of the screw that was taken out today directly under my skin. I can also feel the head of the middle pin (the one that is actually going from the top of my foot to the back and looks short on the photo). My physical therapist has been helping me deal with the whole mental side of that problem :-)

Too, John asked for the pin (only a doctor would do that, eh?), so here's a photo of that too.

I'm glad that I'm slowly healing. On a day to day basis, it all seems way too slow, but when I look at how far I've come, I'm amazed that I've survived this mess, both physically and mentally.

Those are the positive thoughts that I try and channel each day. Here are the negative thoughts that I fight every minute.

Today was my second surgery on my ankle, but my fifth surgery since we moved to Pennsylvania four years ago. I can't even begin to express how nervous I was beforehand, not because I was worried that things wouldn't go well, but just because I know what to expect from surgery now.

I hate surgery mostly because I hate the loss of control. Once the IV begins and they put the Versed in (or whatever memory-forgetting drug they use), I am completely out of control until I wake up again.

Today there was a really scary moment for me emotionally. I don't remember a lot of my life from the last three months. Between the narcotics and the effects of anesthesia (twice before today), I'm realizing that I've lost a lot of memories. People talk to me about phone conversations I had with them, or emails that I sent, or things that I said I would do, and I don't remember any of it. John was sitting next to me before I went in today and he commented that under no circumstances was he going to allow anybody to give me another nerve block. Not knowing what he was talking about, he explained that with my last surgery (the BIG one) the anesthesia wasn't enough for me. I must have been in bad pain when I started coming out of anesthesia, because it's only during those moments that doctors give patients something more for pain. For me, I was already on every thing I could be, but something must have happened, and I ended up getting a nerve block. Asking him what kind of "thing" would require that, he said that I was probably crying, or thrashing around because of the pain.

For some reason, the thought of not remembering that moment and thinking about how bad I must have felt made me start crying. I'm really so tired of all of this. It's like I have an out of body experience and see myself, suffering, and I feel so bad for me.

Then, I began worrying. I have been fighting back tears all week, honestly putting on a happy face for everybody. It's been a matter of channelling every positive thought I can muster into my mind to block out every negative thought I naturally have. Knowing that I was already feeling a lot of stress, I was worried that once I was under again, I would lose control of my emotions. It didn't help when the anesthesiologist came in, and when John explained how stressed I was thinking about the nerve block, the guy said that I had actually needed TWO nerve blocks, again because the pain had been obviously so severe for me. He even remembered me from two and a half months ago. That's not what I wanted to hear.

Turns out, most people in my situation have the pin taken out in the office, but Dr. Barter, my orthopod, remembered my lack of pain control and set me up for the full-out surgery. Again, not what I wanted to hear.

I don't think anyone can really appreciate what it's like once we're "under". The things that the doctors see and experience are things that we probably never want to know about (and is probably the reason they never tell us).

I knew I couldn't hold it together for much longer, so I just laid back. I'm usually the best patient ever, not ever wanting to be labeled a "doctor's wife" which holds many negative connotations. I just shut up, took some deep breaths and tried to let go of it all. 30 minutes later, I was coming out.

I have already spent the last week holding back the tears from self-pity. I really wonder why all of this has been happening to me. The inconvenience of it all, the strain on my family and me, and then to think that I can't even remember the moment when I was in so much pain that the doctors had to do more for me than for most people--it was just too much.

Anyway, it's over. The pin is out. I have to stay in the boot for two weeks more, and then I can be reevaluated to see if I can start trying to walk without it. Hopefully, I can keep channelling all those positive thoughts and eventually start putting all of this behind me.