Sunday, May 20, 2012

Hoping to Live Pain Free

I did have some company during the surgery.  I thought I would be by myself and thought that was what I wanted, but not so much.  Ended up Caroline need some Mom-time so Dani brought her and Samantha up to the hospital.  Samantha ended up staying too.  We really enjoyed being together and just talking.

The surgery went well yesterday.  It lasted about three and one-half hours.  The doctor thought everything went just as he expected.  He said that the disc at L3-L4 was worse then the MRI showed.  There was actually a large piece of disc that had broken off (about 2 inches long) that was laying on the nerve.  He did the discectomy at L3-L4 and another at L4-L5.  He then did the fusion at L4-L5.

Steve did really well. Was in his room within 90 minutes very awake and ready to eat.  The nerve pain he had down his right leg (thanks to the bulge at L3-L4) was completely gone.  That was the only pain he had been having the days prior to surgery.  He was so glad to have that gone.  He was of course experiencing incision pain, but the pain brings healing.  I helped him eat most of his dinner (Samantha finished it off) and he was able to keep that down. Jason brought the boys up for a quick visit which I really enjoyed.  I do miss the kids.  Steve's mom and brother Mark also came up and stayed a bit too. I think he had a good evening.

He was ready to go to bed around 11:00 (so was I!!).  The first hour and a half were great, felt like we slept for hours.  After that it seemed that the nurse and assistant were in here every half hour.  Wish they would learn to come in at the same time.  Praying that Steve has a better day today and can get some rest.  They will be getting him up and that should be pretty painful.  He did take a Valium this morning as a muscle relaxer, but it had an adverse affect on him.  He was fidgety and when he would fall asleep he would quit breathing.  He finally ate his breakfast and they helped with the breathing.

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