Today I zipped home from work to pick up Mom and take her to see the neurosurgeon I work with here in Yakima. She had surgery June 23rd and woke up feeling like they broke her ankles during surgery or something, and since then she's just had horrendous pain, making sitting a very painful activity, and then yesterday her leg gave out and she fell...again.... drat - that's why she had the surgery in the first place!
It was incredible to see the extent of the nerve damage she's experienced somewhere along the line since Jan 1st when this all started. She has no feeling in her feet, nerve messages don't make it down to her toes and feet so when the PA asked her to raise her toes and raise her feet, nothing happened! She also wasn't able to rock back on her heels nor up on her toes. How insane is that?! She had to close her eyes for one part of the exam and the PA used a 2-sided tool (one side smooth, one side pin-pricky) and she had to say whether she felt "dull" or "sharp" and she totally failed that one!
Next, the neurosurgeon came in and asked her a bunch of questions about the specific type of pain she has and exactly where it goes and so on and so forth, and he says everything she's describing is in the L-4 area and most likely the surgeon didn't get it adequately cleaned out, or maybe a bit of bone broke off in there, or ???. One perk, who knew, is that she's short and he might be able to go in there with his tool kit and fix things up and take out more stuff without needing to do a fusion.
The plan is to keep her here until we get the ol' gal fixed and I'm optimistic that it will happen (at least the surgery part) fairly quickly and hopefully hopefully hopefully it will get her some pain relief and eventually get her back to the land of the living! Can you imagine not being able to drive the few miles to the grocery store? Or enduring 4.5 months of basically being confined to home except visits to the doctor? She's certainly outsmarted the gas prices!
It was incredible to see the extent of the nerve damage she's experienced somewhere along the line since Jan 1st when this all started. She has no feeling in her feet, nerve messages don't make it down to her toes and feet so when the PA asked her to raise her toes and raise her feet, nothing happened! She also wasn't able to rock back on her heels nor up on her toes. How insane is that?! She had to close her eyes for one part of the exam and the PA used a 2-sided tool (one side smooth, one side pin-pricky) and she had to say whether she felt "dull" or "sharp" and she totally failed that one!
Next, the neurosurgeon came in and asked her a bunch of questions about the specific type of pain she has and exactly where it goes and so on and so forth, and he says everything she's describing is in the L-4 area and most likely the surgeon didn't get it adequately cleaned out, or maybe a bit of bone broke off in there, or ???. One perk, who knew, is that she's short and he might be able to go in there with his tool kit and fix things up and take out more stuff without needing to do a fusion.
The plan is to keep her here until we get the ol' gal fixed and I'm optimistic that it will happen (at least the surgery part) fairly quickly and hopefully hopefully hopefully it will get her some pain relief and eventually get her back to the land of the living! Can you imagine not being able to drive the few miles to the grocery store? Or enduring 4.5 months of basically being confined to home except visits to the doctor? She's certainly outsmarted the gas prices!
Comments
Happy Healing!
Davita