Wednesday, October 3, 2018

3rd Time's NOT the Charm

I've had three major surgeries in the past year and I really, really, really don't recommend you try it, if you can avoid it. It's not even necessarily the surgeries themselves that are rough on me- it's the damned anesthesia, which really messed with my emotions and mood. I've started taking Gabapentin which is supposed to help with neuropathy and leveling out your mood, so hopefully that helps my chronic pain and post-surgery depression.

During the first surgery they caused trauma to my esophagus, so now I'm dealing with some reflux issues and hoarseness, as a result. It's always something, right?

But wait, that's not all! After the second surgery my oxygen saturation kept dropping and I ended up having to stay in the hospital overnight. Yup, I made it all the way through my fight with Aspergillosis without ever sleeping in the hospital, because I downright refused, even if it meant leaving there at midnight and coming back at 6 am. It only took a concerned wife to keep me there for one night, though. But hey, I got a decent meal and a bunch of popsicles out of it, even if neither of us were able to sleep very well.

I'm still working on getting my body back in order, but I know that these things are only temporary roadblocks on my path to feeling better and I'm doing my best to keep chugging along. I've made it this far, and I have no plans to stop now.

Wednesday, June 13, 2018

It runs in the family

Last year my dad got really sick and of course it was the result of a freak convergence of things that led to a crazy diagnosis and he's probably now in medical journals, too. Like father, like daughter.

Out of respect for his privacy I won't go into full details, but the basics are this: he caught West Nile Virus from a mosquito bite, which spread to his spinal column and caused inflammation that went to his brain causing encephalitis. The swelling in his brain caused a rare form of Guillain-BarrĂ© Syndrome called Miller Fisher Syndrome that paralyzed him. He was very sick and in the hospital and then a rehab facility, followed by months of out patient care and PT. He still suffers from some residual issues related to the nerve damage his illness caused, but he has resumed driving and working. I can't tell you how happy I was the day he could finally move the muscles in his face to smile again!

It was nerve wracking watching him suffer and watching my mom suffer as she watched him suffer. It put us all through the wringer, but I'm so glad that Kate and I were close by and could come up and help him and my mom.

I've always said I'm a lot like my dad, and while I never thought we would both end up getting rare illnesses, of course we did.


Friday, June 8, 2018

Bionic Foot Graduation


I got my last x-ray and steroid shot last week and my podiatrist has signed off on me! Now I'm cleared to hike as far as I want (eh, let's work up to that), climb (I got some new shoes ready to go), and run (ahahahahahahha). It only took 8 years, but my foot is now better than it was even before I got sick with the mold.

Hopefully, that was that last surgery. KNOCK ON WOOD. I'm just not in the mood for that kind of recovery anymore. I think I've paid my dues. I'm good for a lifetime. Or three.

I'm all healed up just in time for us to move, you know how we do. This time we're moving to Chicago, but first we're headed to LA for a month to put up a show. Of course, we'll be hitting a bunch of National Parks along the way. I'm ready to do some more hiking with my bionic foot!


I still have an egg sized squishy bubble on the top of my foot that comes and goes. You can see the bottom and right perimeter of it pretty well in the photos here. My podiatrist said that it's directly to the right of where he put a half dozen screws and a 3 inch plate, so it's probably just residuals welling as that area adjusts to that extra hardware being there and is shifting some tissue around to accommodate for it. Fun stuff, I know. The new scar on top of my foot is already almost the same color as my scar from 2012.


The ankle scars are still really dark, even the punctures. You can see a big one at the top, then a small incision, big incision, then all
those smaller puncture holes peppered along the bottom of my front ankle. I figured they were like syringe holes and would go away after a few days, but I guess not. Who knows how much digging around they had to do through those to pull all my ligaments around and they had to use a lot of deep thick stitches on the incisions since they sit right on a bone/joint.

Not bad, not bad.


Sunday, January 7, 2018

2017 Foot Surgery Update

You guys, I can bend my Franken-toe. I haven't been able to do that in YEARS!

It looks like this surgery went really well and despite having some adverse reactions to the anesthesia and pain meds (vom city), things have gone a lot better than in the past.

I'm 10 weeks out and still working on re-building strength, but the pain is mostly gone. The bone is healing slower than they thought, but it's still on track, regardless. I'll start PT soon and plan to be ready to hike by the end of February when the Mrs. and I head to the PacNW redwoods.

As always, get in touch for photos of the really yucky stuff, but here are some progress pics.




A few weeks post-op
About a month post-op

  
My growing collection of hardware
My wife matched my toes to my bruises and
theywere perfectly timed for Halloween!



My RN mom taking out my stitches

About 2 months post-op







The top of my foot continues to swell
You can see all the entry points including
the dot up top and the series of dots down
below, where they pulled my ligaments
and the big holes in the middle where
they  secured everything together. 






Not bad, eh?