As you can see by the photos below, the surgery was done yesterday. Not only did it go well, but we were reassured that this was in fact the right decision. When Dr. Nelson opened me up he found that "pseudoarthrosis" had occurred in my fracture site. In other words, my body had turned the gap between the bones into a "joint." It was obviously a joint without tendons and ligaments, but was filled with fluid so that the bones would glide nicely. I guess this explains why I had minimal pain but still a lot of fracture motion. Anyway, when pseudoarthrosis occurs, the fracture will never heal itself with new bone.
I also was able to escape the bone graft from my hip. This was a huge relief as I have heard that this would be more painful than the clavicle and would ache for quite some time. Dr. Nelson was able to create enough of a graft from the fracture fragments and the cleaned up bone ends to fill in the gaps.
I found this whole process fascinating. I loved the fact that I got to watch them set up the operating room when I got settled on the table. I had about 6 hours in the waiting room to get over my nerves, so at this point so I actually enjoyed seeing the tools placed out, watching the OR nurses rushing about to prep the room, watching Dr. Nelson pull my x-rays on to the tv monitors. I don't remember much beyond hearing the anesthesiologist say, "I'm going to give you some medicine now," and I am probably thankful for that!
Thank you to everyone for your kind, healing wishes! And, thank you to my hubby, Adam for being by my side yesterday. From what I could tell, spectating surgery was just as exhausting as spectating an ironman. I think he crashed before I did last night! And, thank you to my wonderful mother-in-law, Wendy for going above and beyond with pre and post-surgery hospitality!
Today was day 1 of the road to recovery and I can't say I felt like doing much more than a walk around the neighbourhood, followed by multiple naps, but I'm ok with that. I have to admit that my shoulder does feel foreign to me. It aches, but that's no big surprise. What's most bizarre is this sense of artificial sturdiness and rigid support. I don't think I could have poor posture and slump even if I wanted to! But, I suppose this is to be expected for having a plate of metal in there.
Celebrating with Tiff. Wine for her, prune juice for me.*I apologize if this is a grammatical mess. I feel as rotten as I look in the photo above!
3 comments:
Glad to hear it went well!! Wish you a good and speedy recovery with minimal pain :-)Gett better!!!
YAY!!! i will NEVER forget waking up and feeling for my hip and thinking WOW these are either great drugs or ... and then they were already there to tell me they didn't need to do the graft. SWEET, you'll heal up fast and be right back out there and you'll have a kickass hook looking scar to boot. :)
Thanks guys!
Gusgreeper, my experience was the exact same. My first thought was, "does my hip hurt, does my hip hurt..." But I couldn't feel any pain anywhere, so I started to feel for some bandages and thankfully felt NOTHING down there. Phew! I still have some nice permanent marker sketches on my hip though showing where they were going to cut. YIKES!
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