3/22/2009

First chance that I have a computer connection since the surgery to post. Surgery went very well. It was 3 hours on Thursday morning...from 7:45am to 10:45 am. She spent the remainder of the day in post op recovery. She didn't get into a room until about 5pm. Her post pain was pretty extreme. Many iv pain med's were used and none seemed to keep things calm. They eventually with our consent decided to give her an epidural to numb her lower half, where most of the pain was coming from. This worked for awhile. Enough to finally get her stable enough to move to her room. As far as what the surgery entailed....her left arm had bone protruding again and needed to be revised...shortened by about 1/2 inch and leave padding of tissue on the end was the plan and outcome. The bone protrusion was infected as we had much suspected, and she now will be on iv antibiotics for a couple weeks because of it. Her left leg had bone spurs approximating each other on both her fibia and tibia. We were asked before the surgery, if deemed appropriate, a procedure called "bone bridging" be performed with our permission. What they do is form a bone bridge or help a bridge of bone form between the two bones. Normally our fibia and tibia join at the knee and ankle. In Carol's case they don't at the bottom. If there is enough flex in the bones, they can touch each other when you walk, and this can be painful when walking with prosthetics. The down side is usually some loss of length of leg, which to Carol, and I am assuming other amputees, every bit of length you have is very important to you. So we were against it, if it meant shortening the leg was needed. They found a way to use the bone spurs to bridge the two bones together with the help of some steel pins. They also found that her major nerve in the leg was getting pinned between the fibia and tibia when the two bones squeezed together. The nerve was cut and placed higher up in some muscle. The same nerve thing was done in the arm.

Each day since the surgery it seems the pain is lessening, whether Carol realizes it or not. I think she will be home tomorrow or Wednesday at the latest...we will see. Thanks for all the help this weekend family and friends.

Scott