Saturday, August 31, 2013

Short + sweet

Why did they ever cancel Sex and the City? Watching movie 1 with mom up late...and wondering if Smirnoff Sorbet is actually as tasty as the bottle looks.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Spinal surgery update

So i have to update since I've been M.I.A. for a loooong time. Unable to do what i usually do. 
For those of you not close to my life, it became a very tight and enclosed place for me. I changed mentally because of my physical frustration of struggling with pain that would never go away, being on medications with side effects that cause you to to short fuse and act irrationally. Losing my mid 20s to my body failing me. 
The hardest was my marriage, being unable to even spoon with my own husband in bed, crushed ever part of my heart being a woman and still a newlywed. 
But, The hardest is that no one, and i mean this to the deepest core, no one understands until that happens to them. 
Being in my mid 20s and not being able to do things with my friends like go to dinner and have drinks at the bar, no more trips, the medical bills put pressure on me to work a year past when my doctors were telling me to stop working. 
I literally had to start collapsing and vomit from pain and be in the hospital every month for me to realize that i had to let go. When i did that a lot things  started to change. By taking the pressure off myself as much as i could i could it allowed me to relax and focus on having even just a little more comfort even if it was just for a moment. But still life had its little ways of reminding me that it could be worse. I wasn't dying and in my worst days somehow people who were in a worse physical situation than me would end up in my path. 
It gave me a whole new set of eyes for our permanently handicapped brothers and sisters, this taught  me compassion, and relinquishing control to the greater hands that made me. 
When my husbands work status got to granting us excellent insurance benefits a year and a half ago thats when my real treatment started. So i had the flicker of hope. 
I failed everything you could thing of. When i failed my injection stages and was put in a 5th percentile at my age, i started preparing myself mentally for spinal surgery. Not the biggest type out there, but a pretty heavy surgery. Think of scoliosis surgery as a cake (even though its anything but) and think of mine as a big cupcake of the same type of cake. 
Once my surgery got the go it was scary but man was i ready, so was my family, even though we were all scared. My condition was affecting my total overall ability to walk, put my marriage on pause, affected my bowels. It was awful. Getting wheeled into the OR room "a beautiful day was playing" and as i took deep breathes and already thanked God and my body that i was going to be healed the last thing i remember, staring into the table lamp breathing in and out and tasting the fog ofmedication starting,     everything went white.  
So now its today and I'm writing while doing my little home therapy exercises so i  thought id finally share my state of the art procedure i had done because 22 days post op i can literally feel my life pouring back into my body. 

First of all, All surgeons should look into becoming Mazor Rennaissance certified. Its about as star trek as you can get in surgery. 
 Im already getting ready to toss my walker completely and i had three procedures is one surgery because of this system, bone grafting, laminectomy, my disc removed, a cage put into replace it filled with the bone graft, all my arthritis, and stenosis cleaned right of my bone and then ha  rods and screws put into my spine to secure all that 22 days ago, and i stopped using the walker at home two weeks ago.  It allowed my pedicle screws to be placed in a way that will allow room for my fused vertebras to be kind to my girl parts if and when we ever decide to have babies since you lose your range of motion in that fused area. And it even minimizes my need to wear a stupid brace all the time! The things it allows for heart patients and babies needs for being in the NICU is amazing.... It could be my age, but i know cartwheels, camping, rock climbing to the top in doing hair and being anywhere i want to be doing whatever i want is in my future. Ill be able to sit through dinner, sit through a movie, walk at a flea market. Ill be able to hug my husband as tight as i need to, ill be able to cry and laugh without hurting myself. I can snuggled my dog in bed.  have to take a bunch of meds every four hours or 3 times a day just to do my version of functioning which was being at home, doing nothing, without crying.   

Waiting for surgery prep
George wants to party
Baby girl always knows her mama
Best friend/pain pump party
My bffs flowere
Home nurse giving mom n lar a lesson on how to do my dressing, that arrow is where i had a drain. 
My first walk that was witnessed by stace and augie, i think stacy just wanted my shorts hahahaha
iPad batteriesfinally  dying are terrible when you cant go anywhere!  And down below finally rocking my cane a week after being discharged and rocking one of Randoms Boutique's cali tee woop woot! Stay tuned...Physical therapy is up next!