Some Moments

One of the key themes of Leg+Frame thus far has been the sheer monotony which is recovering from surgery. Every once in a while I'll do something to add some spice to my life, such as leaving my chair to head off on an expedition to the kitchen. But for the most part I stick to my chair—while the leg is settling down a good deal, the pin sites sometimes still prickle when I stand up and I only have so much energy. The only things worth writing about, it seems, are brief little moments here and there. So, for this post, a collection of these moments.

1. Chinese class earlier this week. The frame was making its presence known by pushing against my sweatpants, each strut and each in standing out in stark relief against the otherwise loose hanging fabric. Some of my classmates notice the cage, ask what it is. I offer to let them see. The pants are barely lifted to expose the metal beneath when my classmates are visibly grossed out. "You can actually see it going into your leg," is the immediate surprised reaction. Well, yes, of course you can see the pins going into the leg. What did you expect? They tell me they expected to see some padding between the pin sites and open air. But at this point, padding would just be a hassle for me. Better to keep things simple.

2. Waiting for the elevator to arrive. My senior class of less than a 130 has been on a leg-injuring rampage recently and four or five of us cannot take the stairs. Whenever I want to move from floor to floor, unless I'm feeling really up for a challenge, I get to wait for the elevator, leaning against the walker to relieve pressure from the leg. Eventually, the elevator arrives and when it ascends (or descends) the sounds it makes remind me all too much of the sounds an elevator would make if it was debating plunging you to an early death.

3. This morning, preparing to put on a sock. I lift up the foot and see a trail of dried blood leading up to the region where the sweatpants hides my healing leg. I thought one of the pin sites had sprung a leak (again) but as it turned out the almost-healed ankle incision was to blame. My mother got me a warm wet washcloth and I gently wiped the trail away. While there was not a huge volume of blood to deal with, there was still some and the scrubbing took longer than I anticipated. I yet to check the bed to see if any blood got onto the sheets, but based on patterns in the trail on my foot, such a check would be merited.

4. Trying to fall asleep in the bed my parents rigged up in my mother's office so I wouldn't have to take the stairs to get outside in case of an emergency. It's late and I'm almost asleep. It's also time for the dogs to be put to bed. The dogs are not very fond of being locked into small confined areas away from their humans but they get fed before they fall asleep. As they are led into the back for being thrust outside and eventually confined, they bark with excitement. They just can't help themselves. I wish they could, because their excitement keeps me up later.

5. In my normal life I greatly enjoy roller coasters. While I was in the hospital, Dr. Sundberg hinted that I might be able to ride roller coasters again in August, a reasonable time. At the most recent appointment, my parents made a point to bring up how long I should wait until riding roller coasters again. Unfortunately, Dr. Sundberg does not see the appeal in such contraptions (for me, the appeal lies in the safety of the ride and in the precision of the engineering, in the magnitude of the structure and in the progression of the forces) and informs me maybe in the fall. I do not speak but am not amused. At all.

6. I should probably get outside more but at the moment the entirety of outside is a uniform shade of Minnesota winter gray and when I do go outside the temperature, with a wind chill of minus fifteen or some other ridiculous number, and the wind pass easily through whatever I have on. Maybe during the spring? It can't be too much longer now…

Visualizing Healing

Today marked yet another post-op appointment. Unlike the last two, this one was not at the main St. Paul hospital but rather in a clinic out in the Twin Cities suburbs. Also unlike the last two, I did not show up in a wheelchair but rather trundling along with my walker.

As far as notes from the appointment go, basically I'm on schedule to have the frame removed around the end of April or beginning of May, about four months after it was placed. In an interesting change of pace from when it was put on, a process which required a three hour surgery and six days in the hospital, removing the contraption will take about ten minutes and will be an outpatient procedure. For now, the pin sites look good, the leg is (more officially) straight, bone has started filling in the cuts made during the surgery. For day-to-day life, weight-bearing is according to the level of my comfort. I should be able to leave the walker behind at home before too long and leave it behind altogether within a somewhat reasonable time frame.

Proof of the healing came, as before, from x-rays. Last time I was x-rayed, Dr. Sundberg ordered a standing x-ray to get an idea of how my leg alignment was faring. That particular experiment did not go particularly well—I felt dizzy and nauseous, barely able to remain upright. This time was much easier. I walked over to the x-ray, barely leaning on the walker, got up and was able to help in the positioning of my legs. There was no nauseousness. All in all, it was really quite simple.

And I got proof of healing.

The leg with its final alignment. Note how close the weight-bearing axis (drawn in red) comes to the center of the kneecap. This puts it in a normal position, a great improvement from before Christmas when the weight-bearing axis skimmed the knee (which is not normal).

That the leg is in its final position is, as it turns out, a very good thing. The bone is starting to come back in, which would presumably make continued corrections much more difficult. While the frame still fixes my leg in place, the leg is starting to fix the frame into its current position.

See? The tibia is starting to fill in the cut from the surgery! Another few months of such improvements and I'll have the frame off my leg…

While the gap in the tibia is fairly small, the fibula has a much larger distance to fill back in. While my leg was not corrected a huge amount (about 11˚), the correction was still enough to do this:

See the gap? That gap will eventually become what Dr. Sundberg scientifically calls a "swoosh." Also, kind of hard to tell in this picture, but apparently the gap is starting to be filled in.

Another event to behold at today's appointment was my frame's first interaction with the paper they use to cover the beds in doctor's clinic offices (previously, it has been confined to blankets, the wheelchair and furniture). In a quick scuffle, the hard metal edges of the Taylor Spatial Frame easily dismantled the paper, as evidenced by my photographic proof:

It wasn't even close…

So that's where I'm at today. Still trundling around, bearing weight. Still wearing the frame, although not for forever (distressingly, if the four month prediction turns out to be right, I'm only about 25% of the way through this experience…the hard 25%, sure, but another three months of bonus bulk around my lower right leg does not sound like an appealing enterprise). Dr. Sundberg did not mention physical therapy during the appointment, which tends to make me think I won't need it—I'm walking around, which helps, and the tendon in my ankle didn't freeze up, a major concern.

And, in really exciting news, the wheelchair will be sent back to where it came relatively soon. In even more exciting news, I'll be moving upstairs to my normal room before too long. I've still got a week of sleeping downstairs, but normality is coming.

One Month Out

As of today, I am officially one month into my recovery from having my friend the metal cage placed around my leg—one month of wheelchair, walker (but barely walking), Recovery Couch, chair in the corner, sleeping golden retrievers, less-than-great action movies I am beyond ready to be done with. There were some good parts, yes, but on the whole recovery has pretty conclusively proven itself to be, in three words, boring, boring, boring.
 
The good news: I am making definite strides towards towards leaving the land of recovery. While I missed another half-week of school, being sick on Tuesday and Wednesday, I also made it for the full day on Thursday and Friday (granted, that full day isn't particularly long, given that my free blocks allow me to leave literally hours early). I also ate out for the first time since Christmas, using the walker and not the wheelchair to navigate my way into the restaurant. As much as I enjoy eating at home, it was nice for the change of pace.

And perhaps best of all, I exited the land of the toe-touching faux walk and, earlier today, entered the promised land.

To translate the last sentence: I'm walking again.

As in, 100% weight-bearing.

This is…well, incredible, really. I've spent so long reliant on the wheelchair and being unable to put any weight on the foot that the fact that I can put weight on it without feeling any discomfort is truly amazing. Granted, the leg's stability has never been in question and weight-bearing has always been a matter of comfort.

I'm at that level of comfort now.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm still using the walker, though I'm holding it elevated off the floor as a balancing tool, only looking somewhat ridiculous in the process. With the month of only using one leg (and the weight disparity from the frame), my balance is not yet 100% and my right leg (with the cage) does not feel as stable as the left leg. I can mostly walk without tripping, but I do need my safety net. I don't really know for how much longer, but still—

Dr. Sundberg said at the outset that I should be weight-bearing in about four weeks. He was right. He also said that I'd only need the frame for three to four months after the corrections had been made.

Hopefully he's right about that, too (well, either right or wrong by overestimating the amount of time I spend in this thing…).

Notes from a Quiet Weekend

Well, I'm writing this from my corner chair in the back room, computer on my lap, dog snoring away on his couch. He does not qualify as quality company. The wheelchair remains comfortably in the trunk of the car. My walker is standing next to me. I've been comfortably tottering around using it for support. Even though outside it's really incredibly cold (today's high: 0˚F), I'm comfortable under a layer or three of blankets. My leg is resting on a pillow resting on a footstool. It doesn't hurt at all. Well, at least not now.



In short, on a big picture level, I'm doing decently well.


Although it was a remarkably quiet weekend, I am not heading back to school today. I spent most of the past three days on the chair, zoning out while my brothers were watching movies, zoning out while my brothers were not watching a movie, or vaguely paying attention while my brothers were watching a movie. I survived the first Lord of the Rings yet again and…well, that was about it, with a few exceptions.


Exception number one is that over the weekend, for the first time since before Christmas, I sat in the front seat of a car. Friday night my parents decided to pick up Mediterranean food for dinner. My father asked if anybody wanted to tag along. To the surprise of just about everyone, I volunteered (in my normal non-frame wearing, weight-bearing life, I go on just about every outing possible, be it to the grocery store or the post office or to pick up dinner). To the great surprise of me, my father agreed to take me with. He also agreed to let me try out the front seat of the car. Up until then, I'd been riding pretty exclusively in the back simply because the back provides better opportunities to rest my leg. At some point, however, mixing things up takes precedence over the ability to rest the leg (with frame) on soft, comfortable objects.


Exception number two is that over the weekend, for the first time since before Christmas, I managed to make it to a movie in the theaters (the excellent Silver Linings Playbook, which had been a priority movie to watch for quite some time). This was really quite exciting—not only did I have an excuse to get out of my chair and leave the house, but popcorn would be involved. And a movie. Because of the large distances involved in getting from the car into the movie theater into the specific theater the film was screening, I went in a wheelchair. Most people didn't really seem to notice the wheelchair. I had people cutting ahead of me to get into their seats quicker. And after some time without moving (it should be noted), the wheelchair ceases to be comfortable.


Unfortunately, after getting home from the movie, I did not feel particularly energetic. I sat in my chair and felt tired. I went to bed, got lots of sleep, and spent Monday in the chair feeling tired. Even though showering is, at this point, a relatively simple activity for me to do, stairs and all, I didn't have the energy to shower last night. Just to sit in the chair and feel tired.


Today, I'm back in the chair and still tired.


In normal existence, I rarely (if ever) get sick. Or at least, rarely (if ever) get sick enough to consider missing class and needing to catch up on missed work. As far as I can remember, I haven't gotten sick before during recovery. But I think it's fairly safe to say that I'm not thriving at the moment. Maybe I'll have the energy to put myself back together for tomorrow. Maybe not.


Whatever the case, I can't say this latest development is making me any fonder of this chair (a major discovery from recovery: the more time I spend in/on a piece of furniture, the less fond I am of it).

About Resiliency

As I mentioned yesterday, today my grade got lectured at about resiliency. Well, up until we actually arrived in the library to be lectured about resiliency, everybody was hoping that today would be a surprise bowling trip, including a decisively not-able-to-bowl myself. As it turns out, bowling did not happen, or come close to happening and we were deprived of fun for the morning.

That would be because, instead of going bowling or playing laser tag or doing some other fun activity, we got talked to for a sadly literal three hours about resiliency. To be perfectly honest, I did not pay attention particularly well. I picked dog hairs off my sweatpants. I played with and removed the bandages from my ankle incision, exposing the incision to the air for the first time (it had some distressing amounts of goop on it…I did not approve). I stared at the ceiling. I stared at the floor. I stared off into space. I fidgeted in the wheelchair. And I listened. Occasionally. Long enough to gain some concept of what the talk was about, at any rate.

Now, I've never really given resiliency much thought. I figured I wasn't bad at it, given my previous experiences with surgeries and recovering from surgeries, getting back on my feet and walking. As it turns out, my conception of resiliency was more or less accurate.

According to the wonderful Dictionary app on my computer, resiliency is the ability to recovery from or withstand difficult circumstances.

Before continuing this post, I think it's really important to note that there are millions of people out there who are more resilient than I am, billions who have dealt with more difficult circumstances than I have. In short, I have no special knowledge about resiliency. I am, for the most part, a completely ordinary person (or at least I think of myself that way). But at the same time, given that this blog is the story of my recovery after having this frame, I probably ought to address the subject.

So, how do I deal with recovery?

There are a couple answers (of course). Answer number one is that recovery really hasn't been that bad. As I've said before, I'm more or less completely off of pain medicine now. I no longer use the wheelchair at home. So this hasn't been that hard to deal with.

Answer number two is that there have been some hard, frustrating moments. There was a fairly brutal night at the hospital after I got behind on pain medications. There were my problems with the blister on the bottom of my foot. Some of the pin sites are still a bit sore. And then there's the issue with the sheer bulkiness of the device. I deal with these moments mostly by having focusing on the fact that I will get better and have made ridiculous progress. I suppose you could call it faith, but I think it's more like knowledge. I'll get better soon. Knowing this makes dealing with smaller temporary adversities much easier.

Answer number three is consoling myself with the knowledge that at the very least I won't be able to remember what the discomfort felt like and that once this whole frame endeavor is done with I'll just have some pictures, some scars and some isolated memories to cling to. Heading into the surgery, when I knew full well that this could be a very painful experience, I used this tactic to console myself. Well, this tactic and the fourth tactic.

Answer number four is recognizing the progress I've made from before starting the surgery. My leg, after all, has been corrected by 11˚ and the weight-bearing axis has gone from alarming to normal. As I said, progress.

The Week in Review

It is a tradition at my school to designate the Friday before Martin Luther King Day as Grade Activity Day, in which each grade goes off and does some sort of activity. It is also tradition for the senior class to do something fun and exciting, like bowling or laser tag. So tomorrow, instead of going to my normal classes, I will be meeting with my classmates in the library to be talked to about resiliency so I can survive the rest of this year and (hopefully) college.

My week, in other words, is more or less done.

Out of four possible days to return to school, I made it back on three. During those three days, I had very few problems with wheelchair accessibility, barring an incident during which my brother briefly drove me off the sidewalk (without incident). My energy levels seem to be on the rise—I felt dead after returning Tuesday, beyond dead after returning Wednesday, though perking up later in the evening, and functional today. I went from being subjected to my youngest brother's action movie choices to being able to select movies myself today, going with Dumbo, a movie I hadn't seen in years (thank you, Netflix). I started showering every night again without being completely depleted. I left the wheelchair behind for school, turning entirely to the walker for home transportation. I've gained lots of independence as a result—being able to walk on your own power is really different from relying on somebody to push you around.

In another noteworthy accomplishment, today marked my first complete day back at school. Now, this accomplishment is entirely due to a quirk in my schedule that has me done with class at 12:05 PM each and every Thursday. But at the same time, I made it to school today without missing a class. Definitely a step up from Monday where I stayed at home all day and missed every class.

But perhaps best of all (aside from some truly gorgeous snowfall today) has been the blister on the bottom of my foot. Or, that is, what used to be the blister on the bottom of my foot. If you recall, it used to look like this:

Note: this thing was three-dimensional, filled with fluid, large enough to interfere with toe movement.

Today, it looks something like this:

Ignoring the poor image quality (blame my phone) (and my phone photo-taking skills), note how there is no longer fluid in that blister and how it is now more or less flat against the surface of the foot.

Yes, I can now place the entirety of my foot on the floor. Progress.

Next step: walking. Well, actually it'll be weight-bearing, followed by walking, but you get the idea…

Actually Returning

I meant to write this post yesterday, but after a successful partial return to school I was completely drained of energy to the point where writing a blog post was really beyond me. All I really had the energy to do was sit in my chair and watch television, trying not to fall asleep. I even made the grave mistake of letting my younger brother choose whatever movie he wanted to choose to watch. Two hours of Thor later (actions scenes so poorly lit it's impossible to tell what's going on, shot after shot where the camera's at a thirty or forty-five degree angle for no apparent reason, general action movie predictableness), I was still awake. Barely.

But I'm alive and functioning at the moment and therefore able to write this post, after surviving yet another action movie I didn't want to watch this afternoon (and a nap, which has left me feeling much better, though I suspect that leaving my chair to trundle around in the walker briefly helped, too).

As evidenced by the first paragraph, I have, in fact, managed to return to school. This isn't a full return. I'm only able to stay for a few classes each day and even that manages to drain me of all energy. But at the same time…it is a decisive escape from the house, from the chair, from the Recovery Couch.

I've also started discussions with my teachers as far as what I should do about the material I missed. In most cases, we're just letting it slide. Given my current state, trying to make up all the work seems like it could be counter-intuitive (good: work made up, bad: not enough energy to function), though there is some stuff I will need to complete, mostly classes such as Chinese where the material really is cumulative. All my teachers have been quite understanding so far, which is great.

Another bright spot is the fact that, in practice, my school is decently handicap accessible. I haven't tried the tricky bit yet (the math wing/cafeteria), but the elevator…works, even if it is slow as death and twice as scary, and the classrooms are fairly easy to maneuver about in, even in the world's largest, most cumbersome wheelchair.

The final bright spot I'm going to note here is that people really truly have been very accommodating, very welcoming and (it seems) pleased that I've returned. When you're worn out and spending most of the day in a losing battle to try and keep your ankle incision covered up by your sweatpants, it means a lot to have people smiling and saying "hi" and holding the doors open. So that's been really wonderful.

As far as some very brief, bullet-point progress notes, though I should have mentioned it earlier, my incisions are officially healed—ten to fifteen days post-op is when they're said to be healed. That said, the bandages they stuck on the incisions have not left yet and show no signs of wanting to leave. Additionally, I have moved out of the wheelchair at home. I still need it at school since the crowds are much greater and the distances much longer, but at home I'm completely walker-dependent, which is a definite strong progress note. The closer I get to normal life…

And equally of note:

One of my recovery objectives: defeat a game of Minesweeper (seen here: 20 by 30 gameboard with 100 mines). As you can tell, mission accomplished! I'm feeling much triumph at the moment…

My recovery is actually happening now, in other words.

Very much a good thing.

What I've Done

While today did not, in fact, see my return to school it did see another major milestone: today was the first day since I've been home that I haven't used the wheelchair at all. It spent the entire day sitting in the living room, nobody filling the seat, while the normal day-to-day activity continued all around it. I ate my meals in normal chairs, navigated the house with my walker, spent most of my time in a comfortable leather chair which is not the Recovery Couch (though there was a bit of couch-time).

The take-away message from today? Stuff happens during recovery even when it seems like nothing has happened whatsoever.

Before the surgery, I made a (somewhat) lengthy list of objectives I wanted to complete during my recovery. After all, nearly unlimited couch time should have given me the opportunity to be impressively productive. I'd be able to get impressive amounts of reading done, watch television shows I'd been meaning to watch, start writing a book…oh, and get my leg straightened. And finish college apps.

I finished college apps (there was a firm deadline) and got my leg straightened (that was a passive activity). But as far as every other objective I had…

1) Read a lot of books. Missed that one…I read one book (The Dead Zone) and a bunch of old comic strips. As it turns out, reading is an activity which requires rather more energy than what I often have. Comic strips, being fairly mindless things to read, go down easy. Prose goes down less easy, though I've started reading more now.

2) Successfully complete a game of Minesweeper. I set Minesweeper to make it slightly easier than traditional expert mode (fewer bombs, more squares, a combination which also reduces random clicking to try and get the board to open up enough for logic to start taking place). And trust me, I've tried to be victorious over that silly game. And yet it seems every time I accidentally set a mine off while trying to mark it. Normally these are the most obvious mines on the board. Either that, or I solve to the point where I need to randomly guess, and then I randomly guess poorly. So my ability to click squares and randomly guess needs to improve before that objective can be checked off.

3) Start writing a novel. I've got a concept I'm pretty happy with but I don't have the motivation. Yet.

4) Watch television shows I've been meaning to watch, such as Arrested Development and the BBC's Sherlock. One of the tragic truths of my recovery has been that I share the television with my younger brothers. This sharing is not always conducive to checking off recovery objectives. I have, however, seen Captain America: The First Avenger now (the youngest brother enjoys the Marvel movies). I was surprised at how okay it was…perhaps a few too many explosions, but all in all a solid effort.

5) Keep up with this blog. This one I actually accomplished, as evidenced by the number of posts here and the average length of each post, though I'm still tragically behind on the back-story aspect of Leg+Frame. So while I can't say I've done much these past few weeks, I can say I've done something. And as I continue moving towards a more normal existence with less time on the Recovery Couch and less time in the wheelchair, hopefully I'll get more and more done.

In Which I Don't Return to School

My hopes were high for a return to school this morning. Unfortunately, it didn't happen and I am back on my couch with a pillow under the frame getting ready to try again tomorrow.

Long story short (though it really isn't that long of a story to begin with), my return to school was dependent on how much sleep I managed to get last night since the concern with my return is that I'll make it back one day, wear myself out completely, and then be on the couch recuperating for the next little while. I've been known to overdo things before. The goal is to not set myself back through over-enthusiastically making these steps towards a more normal existence, such as returning to academic work. One way to help prevent such a set-back is to be properly rested.

At 6:00 this morning, I was not properly rested, from what I could tell.

Part of the design for coming back involved going to bed at a somewhat early hour so I could try and get as much sleep as possible. Unfortunately, falling asleep is predicated on being in a position which is conducive towards falling asleep. The trick with such a position is, now that my leg is healed enough that I can move it around, well, the possibilities for sleeping positions increase exponentially and the whole process becomes much trickier.

The leg itself is not really of much help here. While I can move it around, I can't really move it around that much. The pin sites are still apt to bleed if stressed out too much and sudden movements result in the frame aching. The physical size of the frame also makes matters interesting, as does the fact that resting the frame on anything but a pillow results in discomfort.

Which is to say, I honestly tried to fall asleep early enough to make it to school. It just didn't happen. At some point (hopefully tomorrow), I'll make it. Just…well, apparently not now.

Slowly Continuing Recovery

After the excitement of Friday (leg straightened! into college! Jurassic Park!), yesterday was fairly quiet—probably a good thing, seeing as today included another outing, for a college interview (which went well), as well as a shower (getting clean has become the highlight of my existence) and then hopefully a successful return to school tomorrow.

All in all, it was a pretty relaxed week. I finished reading The Dead Zone by Stephen King after a couple weeks of reading—I started the book in the hospital waiting room the morning of my surgery. All in all, an enjoyable read, filled with references to other King books and a very good companion piece to his much later 11/22/63. Not a difficult read, but sometimes that's what you need after a bout with anesthesia: something simple and entertaining.

Beyond that, there was my previously-discussed trip to the hospital, full days without my needing to seek the aid of Tylenol or Valium (my pain medicine-free streak ended yesterday after the frame required a little bit of extra help to calm down after a fairly intense final day of corrections), and, of course, time on the couch. Dr. Sundberg has prescribed the next step of my recovery as starting to leave the couch. The result: shorter distances covered in the wheelchair compared to the walker, even though the walker takes a lot more out of me, and slow progress towards greater normalcy in my life. For example, yesterday morning marked the first breakfast I've eaten in a normal chair, instead of a wheelchair of hospital bed, since having the frame placed. This morning marked the second time I ate breakfast in a normal chair.

And, in an even more note-worthy and ambitious moment, I transitioned from my couch into a normal chair. I can't really state just how wonderful it feels, leaving the couch. Don't get me wrong—it's a plenty nice couch (just ask Sunny the previously-mentioned golden retriever). But at this point, the couch has become so linked to my inability to get out of the house and move that transitioning away from it… Well, it's a step in the right direction.

Speaking of steps, this week I started trying to walk again. Well, more faux-walking than real-walking, but still. While the leg is completely 100% stable, I'm still not weight-bearing (just because you can walk on a leg doesn't mean it wouldn't hurt). So what I do is hobble around on the walker, touching the foot to the ground in some imitation of the tempo of actual walking. It completely sucks the energy out of me, but I figure the sooner I get back to normal life, well, the better. Recovery life, as evidenced by the rather repetitive nature of some of my previous posts (couch, couch, frame, couch, couch, frame), can get old kind of quickly.

Which is why I've been enjoying every little "first" that has come my way since the surgery. First time getting out of the hospital bed post-op. First strut adjustments. First time post-op seeing the snow and the outside world beyond the realm of my hospital room. First time claiming my couch. First time eating breakfast in a normal chair. First time leaving my couch.

And tomorrow, hopefully, first time returning to school.

My college interview today was at a Panera Bread. I was sitting in my wheelchair with a cup of hot chocolate and my interviewer and an elderly man came up to me, pointed at the rather obvious device hiding beneath my sweatpants, and commented that the frame looked like it hurts. And, yes, it looks frightening. But it also looks like this recovery is actually progressing.

Which is definitely a good thing.

Triumphs

Well…I'm done now. At least, I think I'm done. At least mostly done.

Let me explain: before heading to my second post-op appointment this morning (the third one is in two weeks, I believe), we didn't do any strut adjustments, seeing as those have normally been done around lunch-time and the appointment was a morning one.

So. After getting x-rayed (more on that later, including the previously promised pictures), I went into examination room Purple 3 to be seen by Dr. Sundberg. We told him adjustments hadn't been done for today. And, between chatting about the history of these frames (let's just say I'm glad I'm having this done now instead of back twenty to twenty-five years ago…the pins have improved) and offering stories of medical issues he's encountered before (such as a dog accidentally eating a man's toes), he did two days worth of adjustments right then and there and my leg is now more or less straight.

Well, probably.

But at this point, probably is so much better than not at all. Certainly I enjoy being in this position, knowing that I'm either all the way or a few degrees away from being able to live a fuller, more active life rather than knowing that I've got a frame and two weeks of adjustments (plus a couple months for bone cut healing) before that fuller more active life.

So that feels good.

That feels really good. Knowing that I've gone from here:

This x-ray, from two and a half years ago, is what set me on this whole journey to begin with. Now, your weight-bearing axis is an imaginary line which can be drawn from the center of your hip to the center of your ankle. Note how, for the left leg, the weight-bearing axis passes straight through the center of the knee. This is normal. For the right leg, however, the weight-bearing axis does not, resulting in major potential problems down the road.

To here:

Because I still have difficulty standing (you can't see in this picture, but I was devoutly leaning on whatever I could lean on, including my father, to remain upright while feeling slightly nauseous), this isn't the most perfect picture. My legs are probably turned at some strange angles (the left one definitely is), but you get the idea. The leg is much, much straighter. Maybe not all the way to normal, but definitely in the zone of OK. And this x-ray was taken before Dr. Sundberg decided to just finish up strut adjustments), so with corrections to standing ability and the improved degree of correction… Well, you get the idea.

This isn't to say that there's still not a ways to go. My tibia has to fill in the bone cut, which looked like this last week (there isn't a clear picture from today…sorry!):

With helpful digital annotation from Dr. Sundberg. No bone growth in this photo yet (as in, no bone filling in the hole…as you can see, there are plenty of bone growths…)

Considering that the fibula cut looked like this last week…

Also of note: you can see how well those pins are fixed into my bones. Those things aren't coming out…

And now looks like this…

At least this is proof of progress?

Well, there might be a ways to go still.

But at the moment, today has been more or less the best day in my life. Sure, I spent a good chunk of it on my couch feeling tired and some redness was spotted around one of the piano wire pins, which might be a pin site infection but is most likely just skin irritated by being stretched around as the frame gets adjusted (my mother went to Target to pick up antibiotic cream just in case), but my leg is straight. Today was also a success in matters totally unrelated to leg straightness: after years of waiting and desperately searching Internet rumors, Jurassic Park 4 has been officially announced, which means I'll be busy between the hours of about midnight and two in the morning on June 13, 2013. And I got into college (at last! triumph!).

All in all, success.

Relief

For the past few days, the bottom of my foot has sported a three-dimensional fluid-filled purple blob, a blister, part of the ever-evolving pressure sore left over after my encounter with the evil hospital boot. I've been doing almost everything in my power to try and keep the blister from becoming worse than it already is, which mostly means lying on my back with the leg propped up on two pillows stacked on top of each other, hoping that the thing wouldn't rupture itself.

Well, mission successful.

As of right now, the blister has been drained. After spending the day with the sore feeling like it had been stuffed with an inflating balloon, it feels so nice to know that most of the fluid in the blister has been squeezed out. And to have the bulk of the blister replaced with a decisively smaller band-aid is also wonderful…I can move my toes again!

When my father came home from work this evening, my mother suggested he take a look at the foot. His look lasted all of seconds before he asked me if I'd like the blister popped.

"Sure," I said.

Hours later (picking my youngest brother up from swim practice got in the way of seeing to my foot), my father approached his eldest, lying on the couch with leg in frame propped u on pillows, with a couple alcohol pads and a scary pointy object.

I asked if this would hurt.

He replied, probably not. Maybe some stinging later. But for now, the skin over the fluid sac would not be able to feel it as my father poked a small hole into the blister for the fluid to be drained out.

Then he started washing over the site with the alcohol pad. Once, twice. He was right: the blister itself had no feeling, though the skin around it did. Despite these hints towards the veracity of his promise, I still asked for Rhino the stuffed hippopotamus, just for comfort, only to discover that Rhino was right next to me.

And, before I could protest, the safety pin was in my skin and making the hole. I could feel a slight tugging sensation but there was no pain. It took a couple tries, from what I could tell, to set things straight—the fluid was hiding under a callous.

But before too long, the fluid was out, the blister more two-dimensional than three-dimensional. A tremendous relief.

I'm hoping that I'm now over the worst of my struggles with the foot. The frame remains very, very easy to live with and, really, hasn't been a problem. Which means that if this foot is over the worst of it, I'm over the worst of my recovery…

Probably not, but I can dream, can't I?

The Corrected Frame

Today has been, so far, a fairly uneventful day (translation: I have spent my day relaxing on the couch while Sunny the couch-loving golden retriever snores away on the couch next to me). Which is to say, there really isn't much new for me to report.

However, as promised, I now have a picture of the frame as it currently exists on my leg with only three days of strut adjustments left to go. I don't really want to re-post the original frame picture here for the umpteenth time, but for a point of reference as far as where my leg started this process, the picture's in my last post. I think.

Anyhow, I present to you the (almost) corrected frame:

Note how close to parallel those two rings are…

Completely unrelated but also of note: last night marked some minor milestones in my recovery process. Milestone number one was that my mother moved back upstairs to her normal bed after spending the past two weeks in the hospital or on a couch more or less right next to my current room in case I need help in the middle of the night.

Milestone number two was that I was able to fend for myself against the cat last night.

Some quick background: my family has five dogs and two cats. Of the dogs, only Sunny has figured out how to open doors. I think both cats have figured out the trick. Sadly, neither cat is a welcome presence in the room while I'm trying to fall asleep, especially our male cat, Asad (better known as El Snugglo because he really, truly hates being snuggled. With a passion). When Snuggs opens the door and marches into the room, he can be counted on to prance all over you, to screech and carry on, to make a general nuisance of himself.

Last night, Snuggs came into my room.

I was not amused. For a few seconds, I had a quandary: should I call my mother and alert her to the situation, disrupting her first night of sleeping in her own bed in weeks? should I let the door remain ajar, allowing the cats to wander in and out at will, knowing full well it would make my night much harder and probably entail my waking up at 6:30 with the dogs? or should I get up on my own, use the walker to march the door once Snuggs was out of the room, shut the door and return to bed?

I went with the final option. I got up, used the walker, shut the door. Then I returned to bed and slept peacefully the rest of the night.

To be fair, I'm still not incredibly stable with the walker. While the frame isn't super heavy (it weighs about two pounds), it's still enough to knock me slightly off-balance. I also can't go very far in the walker without needing to sit down and rest. But at least the walker offers a good deal more independence than the wheelchair, including the ability to lock the cat out of my room for the night.

Another advantage the walker has over the wheelchair: it handles rugs far better than the wheelchair. Also: a walker is far less tempting to brothers with limited attention spans to play with than, say, a wheelchair.

On Frame-Wearing

So.

This is a shorter entry to address two frame-related concepts.

At the moment I have what looks like a weekend hardware project bolted to my leg. One of my friends, whose mother recently spent three months in the company of a frame, dubbed these things "Frankenstein devices." That's a fairly apt description, though I do mostly think of it as "hardware device."

Heading into the procedure, my parents and I briefly talked about giving the frame a name. Some suggestions were offered. None took. Don't get me wrong—there was a definite appeal in trying to name my Taylor Spatial Frame (and, no, Taylor would be too unoriginal a name). Humanizing the machine, offering a dash of humor to an otherwise somewhat-dull period of months…there was promise in there.

At which point I saw the frame.

In case you'd forgotten what the frame looks like…(from the hospital)

For the more squeamish, the frame in sweatpants.

 And then I realized: this is a piece of metal. This is a piece of metal which appears to have been designed solely so it appears to be completely devoid of anything resembling a soul. It is a medical device which exists to hold my leg together for the time being (and to correct the deformity, mustn't forget about that). What am I doing naming it?


Which is to say, if anybody has naming suggestions, feel free to post them in the comments.

The honest truth of the matter is, I'm going to be living with this thing for the next three months, until corrections are complete, according to this schedule:

The numbers represent the length of the struts on the frame (if you scroll up to the top image in this post, you can see the struts as the adjustable metal pieces which hold the two rings of the frame together (technicality: the top ring is actually only a 2/3 ring so I can bend the leg; the bottom ring goes all the way around)) in millimeters. At the end, all the struts will be 172 mm long. As of now, we are on day 10 according to this schedule. Clearly, my ability to post photos anywhere near when they are actually taken is questionable…

And then, after corrections are complete, the frame stays on until my bones fill in the bone cuts made during surgery. I'm getting x-rays on Friday and will try and post pictures then. Also, since the leg will be one day of adjustments away from being fully corrected, I'll get to post before/after pictures regarding leg alignment. Which makes me happy (much more happy than the fact that I'll be standing up for one of these x-rays, which will be interesting, given the frame).

As I've said again and again on this blog, the pain from this procedure really hasn't been that bad. I don't enjoy the fatigue and I hate being limited to the couch, but the knowledge that my leg is almost straight is worth all of it and more.

Incidentally, on Saturday, when corrections ought to be done, I'll be doing my best to party (while, of course, acting in an age-responsible way and acknowledging the fact that I will be a whopping two and a half weeks post-op). Just saying.

Also, I'll try and post more up-to-date photos of the frame before too long because there really is a difference between what it looks like now and what it looked like then as far as alignment goes.

Couch Life, Continued

Well…today was yet another day on the couch for me. This routine of getting up, having a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast (I love oatmeal and am not complaining about the oatmeal), going to my couch, staying on my couch for a couple of hours, eating lunch, returning to the couch for afternoon couch activities, eating dinner, returning to the couch for evening dinner activities and going to bed has already started getting a bit old.

Except, of course, for the exceptions.

I'm still not running on full energy, limiting the amount of stuff I can do. As a general rule, the day after an outing (outing being here defined as getting in the car to be wheeled around somewhere in the wheelchair before getting back in the car to return home), I'm dead tired and do nothing but try not to fall asleep on the couch. As a general rule, showers have a similar effect on me.

The trick with outings and showers is, I'm starting to sense that they are necessary components of my life. Showers because I greatly enjoy being clean and outings because I can really only take so much time indoors.

Today marked some serious progress in my recovery because I was able to complete both a shower and an outing.

As my mother pointed out today, I have yet to discuss my showering routine on this blog. I think I will now. But, to preface, a discussion on my house. My house was built somewhere around 1900. Or at least early in the twentieth century—I'm not sure when. One of the great truths this experience has taught me is that buildings built sometime in the early twentieth century (or before then) were not designed with wheelchairs in mind.

To translate: on the ground floor, where I live, is my bed (which my parents moved into what is temporarily not my mother's office while I was in the hospital), my couch, the television, the kitchen, a bathroom and the dining room. There is no shower downstairs.

The shower is upstairs.

In order to get to the shower, I have to sit on the stairs and scuttle up like a crab, holding my leg (with frame) up as I go. This is not the most dignified way to go up stairs, but it is a lot easier than the alternative, which involves me leaning heavily on a parent and hopping on my good, frame-free leg. Then, once upstairs, I have to walker my way more or less all the way across the house. Then hop into the shower, where there is, mercifully, a stone bench I can sit on and use to keep the leg elevated. Whichever parent is helping me clean myself takes responsibility for the bad leg and for my back. I clean the rest of myself. And then it's back to the walker and back into crab position all the way down the stairs so I can recuperate on the couch.

The couch…it isn't like I have anything against the couch. It's a nice piece of furniture, well-made, sturdy, pretty comfortable. In fact, if you ask our golden retriever, Sunny, couches are gifts from the gods (Sunny has a thing for sleeping on the couches, and even though his mother does not approve, his stubborn insistence on sleeping on the couch earned him full couch dog rights until I came along with my frame and took over his couch. He was not impressed).

See? Not impressed.

My main problem with the couch is that, as a whole, it is a rather limiting environment, especially as I spend most of my time on the couch on my back with my leg propped up on several pillows. This is for several reasons:
1) the frame greatly appreciates not being dragged down by the fell force of gravity. I'm mostly off pain medicine now (did not take so much as a single Tylenol today—progress!) but my comfort is improved by not letting the two pound device yank down on my bones, and
2) the blister at the bottom of my foot has now gotten worse. Whereas it started off as a very painful looking pressure sore, it is now a clearly three-dimensional fluid-filled entity that could, theoretically speaking, burst at any moment. I know next to nothing about blisters, but apparently having the blister burst on me would not be a good thing (I can already feel the fluid inside building up a good deal of pressure, making any sort of foot motion a bit tricky). If it survives until my next post-op appointment Friday, we will be discussing its treatment with Dr. Sundberg. But at the moment, for the sake of caution, the foot remains elevated so the following thing does not get any worse:

Two things: 1) The pillow my foot is resting on was bought by my parents almost immediately after my return. It is a generously sized product from Target and I love it dearly, mostly because it's easier to position the frame on  larger pillows than it is to position the frame on smaller pillows. 2) My brother, who I wrangled into taking this photo, was not particularly amused and made faces which clearly explained how grossed out he was by this friendly protrusion on the bottom of my foot. While I apologize to him, I also thought the blister was worth documenting for this blog.

The blister has also greatly reduced the amount of time that foot can spend in a shoe. For instance, during today's outing, the foot was encased in a slipper. Really, it wasn't that big a deal, but at the same time…I've got a bulky piece of hardware strapped to my lower leg already. The more I can return to normalcy, the better.

Today's outing, despite the slipper detail, was a triumphant start to returning to normalcy. Now, at the beginning of this whole leg-and-frame process, Dr. Sundberg told me I'd probably miss school for roughly the entire month of January. At this point in time, it's safe to say that I'm recovering faster than initially expected (for instance: the amount of time I'll be spending in the frame will probably be closer to four months than the six we were initially told to anticipate). Last Friday, at my first post-op appointment, he cleared me to return as soon as I could. While I still don't have the energy to make it back to school, I will soon.

Which brings me to today's outing. Like my house, my school was built in the early twentieth century (I think it was actually built in the year 1900). While there are a number of features in the school designed to increase handicap accessibility, it still made sense to tour the building with me in my wheelchair.

A word about the wheelchair: From my perspective, my current wheelchair isn't half-bad. It rides reasonably smoothly and I can get into and out of it fairly easily. From the perspective of everybody else, the thing is a nightmare: big, bulky, cumbersome, hard to maneuver. Things such as rugs present major obstacles when one is trying to cope with my wheelchair. There are lots of rugs on the first floor of my house, which is a problem. Also, despite having lived with the wheelchair for a week, the dogs have yet to figure out that the wheelchair is not a friend and still need to be scolded as I come by in my throne-on-wheels so their legs don't get run over and squished in a rather decisively unpleasant manner. Long story short, since the thing is so unwieldy, we figured it would make sense to take the wheelchair (with me in it) to school to test out my second semester schedule.

Step one: getting into the building. The parking lot was not as snow-free as the two other parking lots I've been in post-op. The wheels on the wheelchair went round and round in the slush and got rather disgusting.

Step two: navigating past hordes of people. We toured at 4:30 PM, a time when we (meaning myself, my parents and my grade dean) figured the building ought to be reasonable clear of people. Today, however, marked auditions for my school's spring play. Hence, hordes of thespians, all of whom were actually very willing to accommodate me and my wheelchair (and none of whom stared at the suspicious bulk under my sweatpants which is the frame). And many stopped to say hi, which was really nice. A note: after surgery (or, I'd imagine, any injury which takes you out of commission for a long-ish period of time, though I'm really only used to surgery), people saying hi, acknowledging you, feels really, really good.

Step three: discovering how handicap-accessible the building was. The answer: surprisingly, not bad. There are a couple ramps thrown into the mix which can all be navigated with my leg extender all the way out. The wheelchair fit into all of my classrooms. Apparently, each bathroom at the school has a handicap-accessible stall which looks like it would be exceedingly easy to use. The only major issues to report involve (surprise, surprise) the size of my wheelchair.

Which is to say, the thing barely fits in the elevators. Each elevator trip, I was afraid the doors would just refuse to shut and then much fuss would be necessary to get the doors to shut and the elevator trip to begin. I cannot say this was a problem I was anticipating. As a general rule, the elevators in my school are slow as death and make scary noises. I expected that. But for the wheelchair to barely fit… The good news is, we now know the moves to make the thing fit. Progress.

Also, there's a wheelchair lift to get into the math wing. From the beginning we knew that might not fit me (I even wrote an opinions piece about the lift for the school newspaper, wondering why there wasn't a ramp in its place instead, only to learn about a day too late for my article revisions to be printed that federal regulations would not allow a ramp in that space). The lift did not even come close to fitting the wheelchair. This is with both leg extenders down. Disappointing, to be sure, but at least now we know.

Step four: make sure the wheelchair is not too bulky for others to push around. One of my friends, who is on the smaller side of the spectrum, was there while we were testing out the school accessibility. Since the combination of Natcher, frame and wheelchair weighs in excess of 200 pounds, we tested out whether she could move the entire ensemble. It's possible.

My current goal is to return to school early next week, maybe. The good news is that my schedule is ridiculously easy this semester (only five classes (one of which is Creative Writing, which I more or less live and breathe to begin with), two free blocks) and I have lots of do-nothing time built into my school day. Which hopefully entails a full return soon?

But for now, I will remain on my couch and keep the foot elevated. In another note of progress, I returned today to doing casual for-myself reading (The Dead Zone by Stephen King…entertaining, if not his best, though it's been making for a great recovery read).

And at some point Sunny the unimpressed golden retriever will get the couch back all to himself.

Almost a Second-Semester Senior

As of 7:50 AM this morning, when I was still asleep, my winter break officially ended and I became a second semester senior. Which is rather strange to think about. For as long as I've lived in Minnesota (just about three years now), the importance of my academic work for getting into college has been emphatically emphasized in no uncertain terms.. And now…that particular importance is gone. I'll still try, of course, if only for myself.

I've never been particularly forgiving of any fault in my academic work (or, more accurately, any separation between my actual execution of assignments and my expectations for the execution of my assignments). Most of that drive is internal. I like to do well in school.

Based on that information, it probably shouldn't come as a surprise that I'm not a huge fan of missing school. Missing school means missing information which will need to be learned later in a last-ditch effort not to miss out on potentially valuable concepts. It means falling behind.

Today became the first day I missed school to recover from my bout with the placement of the Taylor Spatial Frame.

Just to be clear, I don't regret having the surgery. When I think that the corrections to straighten my leg and fix my weight-bearing axis are now two-thirds of the way done and that, in less than a week, my leg will be fixed and, in the words of Dr. Sundberg, the deformity will be corrected, I generally break down in happy tears. There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that this surgery was the right call. The frame itself has been surprisingly easy to deal with and the results…well, the results should hopefully speak for themselves.

At the same time, I woke up this morning, ate a bowl of oatmeal, and proceeded to the couch and slept for a couple of hours. Yesterday I went for an outing with my family. This outing consisted of my getting into the car, our driving to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum about half an hour away, me being wheeled about in the wheelchair for a short period of time, and our coming home. And yet, despite the lack of arduous activity, this outing left me completely drained today.

I try to avoid looking at the frame. Sooner or later, I'll have to get used to the sight of this hardware contraption bolted to my tibia, but for now I'm leaving it safely covered by my sweatpants. However, from what my parents (who do have to look at the frame) have told me, the pin sites are healing well. I barely feel strut adjustments. Aside from a nightly dose of Tylenol and Valium, I'm mostly off pain medications. The pressure sore on my foot is now quite recognizably a blister which should be gone before too long. I'm capable of moving around the house in a walker, can sit up longer, can dangle my leg for longer. And yet…

And yet the hardest part of this whole experience has been fighting off fatigue. For the past few nights I've managed to sleep all the way through the night without waking up before morning. This entails my staying awake through the day, which has proven tricky. Today, for instance, I watched four hours of movies to stay awake.

At some point I'll have the aftereffects of anesthesia thrown off and will be able to return to school and my normal, everyday life. Some point soon.

But for now, I'm still stuck on my couch, trying not to fall asleep.

A Solid View of the City of St. Paul

I've been at home for about a week now post-hospital and all the details of my stay have started blending together into a single blob-like conception of confinement, morphine, tubes, needles, beeping machines, friends, family, movie-watching and an unexpectedly exciting Vikings-Packers game. Which is to say, if I don't write this entry now I'll probably forget too much of the stay to sketch out any vague indication of my stay.

As you may recall from pre-frame updates, my stay was projected to last between two and four days. As you may recall from post-frame updates, my stay actually lasted six days. Why? Complications, in the form of the previously-discussed pressure sore which took over my foot.

In short, because of my holiday season surgery date, rooms and beds at the hospital were not in high demand, meaning that there was little to no pressure to get me back home on an abbreviated schedule. The benchmark for my return home then became whether or not I was comfortable on oral pain medications alone. Which took about six days.

The room I stayed in was, all told, not half-bad. My mother, a former ICU nurse, estimated that the thing could hold three patients and a baby, though I was the sole occupant. And then there was the view. My room, you see, was rather well-situated to behold the splendor of St. Paul, Minnesota (which, to be fair to St. Paul, is actually pretty impressive).

While the image quality here isn't the best, at least this picture gives some indication of the view from my hospital room (which, I probably ought to add, has by now surely found itself a new occupant).

Another indication of the views from the room. As you can tell, lots to see. For example…

…the Cathedral!

My main complaint with the view, for the first few days, was the fact that my bed and the windows were on opposite sites of the room and, given the large, bulky device attached to my leg, I could not get up and appreciate the views everybody else was commenting on.

My other main complaint was that I spent a large chunk of my hospital stay sporting an impressive number of tubes going into and out of my body. There was the epidural, for one, which stayed in for about seventy-two hours, as well as the catheter, which stayed in for a few hours after the epidural departed. Then there was the IV. Actually, two IVs. The first IV went bad (that site is still healing and still visible) and had to be changed out for a second.


Once the tubes were out, the amount of freedom I felt was astounding. Those were, however, the big moments.

In many regards, the littler moments were even more remarkable—like when I figured out what became my favorite hospital stay trick: raising and lowering my right leg, frame and all. Or, a more recent post-hospital moment, waking up after sleeping all the way through the night for the first time since the surgery (in the hospital, the nurses woke me every few hours to take vitals and reposition me, leaning me left or right to keep circulation functional or something along those lines).

Perhaps the best part of all was finally getting showered. I've discovered through the experience of going (for reasons of practicality) multiple days without showers that I'm really very fond of feeling clean. Cleanliness is one of those things that just makes you feel like a more complete, functioning member of society.

Having breakfasts which look like this, on the other hand, does not have that particular effect:

From my final day at the hospital. Yes, I ate it all. No, most of the meals were not this bad.

But still…I'm done with that part of the experience. For the most part. You see, I have two scheduled post-op appointments, one of which I've already gone to (x-rays, a look at pin sites, being wheeled around, then back in the car for home), the other of which is this Friday. Both appointments are at the hospital where the surgery and my subsequent stay took place.

But hey, I don't have to spend the night anymore. Progress (though that view sure was nice).

Life+Frame (1.5 weeks later)

So…I'm about a week and a half post-op now. I figured it might not be a bad idea to just quickly write up how life with the frame has been in general.

The answer is, not too bad. My pain has been pretty tolerable. By now I don't really need any pain medication, though I've still been taking Tylenol and some Valium at night to try to make sleep easier. In general, the hardest part of the whole process has been dealing with sleep and my ever-fluctuating energy levels.

Positioning the frame at night, I've discovered, is not nearly as easy as it should be, requiring copious amounts of turning and tossing about. It's hard trying to find a comfortable way to hold the leg when the frame adds so much bulk. Last night's tossing resulted in one of the pin sites springing a leak and spreading a solid amount of blood over the leg, which was a bit of an unhappy surprise to find in the morning (I didn't notice at all during the night). Beyond positioning, night is also when I start to worry more about the state of the leg—is one of the pin sites bleeding? what if I accidentally knocked my bones out of alignment? what if one of the pins is infected? While I normally do get to sleep at some point, it's been taking longer than I'd prefer.

The other major challenge is the fact that I really don't have the energy to do anything. A full day's activity will look something like going upstairs for a shower, taking said shower (getting cleaned up is one of the highlights of my existence at the moment since, because there's a set of stairs between me and the shower, it's not practical to shower more than once a day), returning downstairs, lurking on the couch for the rest of the day. Yesterday I took a scheduled trip back to the hospital for my first post-op appointment, which wiped me out for yesterday and today. Long story short, my activity is really, really limited. Lots of just resting and watching movies. Or television shows. I'm not picky.

As far as dealing with the frame itself, strut adjustments have been very straightforward. Though these adjustments are physically torquing my bones into alignment, they've been very easy on me. My mother, who's been in charge of doing the actual adjusting (I read off the numbers she sets the struts to), she can feel the resistance as she makes the adjustments. Again, though, no real pain. Even better: the corrections are now more than 50% done, assuming a new set of corrections isn't ordered at my next post-op.

Aside from one of the pin sites bleeding last night, the sites themselves are in fairly good shape and have been rather low-maintenance. Since coming home, they've had to be cleaned once, which, while not fun, was also not unbearable (I took out any discomfort by twisting a washcloth to its limit…that strategy, I might add, was quite successful).

Mobility-wise, since my left leg was not operated on at all, I'm able to hop around by either using my walker or using other people, sturdy objects or the wall for support. Having the frame dangling, though, is comparatively uncomfortable, so I prefer using my wheelchair with leg extension. Since getting around requires having other people help me, I've mostly been sticking to my couch.

At this point, I'm really just waiting for strut adjustments to be complete, at which point my bones can fill in the cuts which were made during surgery and I can have the frame removed. Also, I'm waiting for when I can leave this couch…

A Blistering Start to Recovery

From what I've been told, the procedure itself went well. After I was put to sleep, an epidural was inserted into my back (for pain control—the thing, which stayed in for about three days, more or less paralyzed my right leg) and a catheter, required thanks to the epidural. At which point the surgery itself began, bone growths were removed, my tibia and fibula surgically broken, the frame put on. The breaks in the bone were achieved by drilling many small holes into the bone, then connecting the holes and are really rather clean. The frame itself is fixed to my leg by way of five six mm pins and two piano wire pins, all of which are attached to the tibia (the fibula is being left to its own devices, as far as I can tell). Apparently the thing is stable to the point that, if I wanted to and didn't mind the pain, I could walk on the leg immediately post-op. For the moment, for reasons which I hope are relatively self-explanatory, I've been trying to avoid putting too much weight on that leg.

Aside from the details, after about three hours in the OR, during which, according to what my anesthesiologist told me later, I lost only 50-75 milliliters of blood—the equivalent of about a fifth of a can of soda, I was moved to the recovery room, woke up and promptly proceeded to try to tell everybody I knew that I was out of surgery and it went well.

The trouble was, my spelling (and grammatical proficiency) had been somewhat altered by the fact that I had just been exposed to anesthesia, as evidenced by the following Facebook status update:

Out of surgery! Apparently operstion proper went well. Logs of windows in my my hospital room—always a positive. Surgical sites at a dull ache but still very happy surgery went well and optimistic for recovery ahead.

Why AutoCorrect didn't fix "operstion" is beyond me. And as far as the rest, well, grammar and morphine were not created to co-exist. Still…I was out of surgery, which counted for a lot. Even better, as much as I was terrified the surgery would result in lots and lots of pain, at the moment, I was feeling decently comfortable. A dull ache at the pin sites, no complaints from the incisions. And it stayed that way. Using the ten-point scale of pain (one: low pain, ten: worst pain you can imagine), the frame itself only ever got up to a three or a four as I was eased from the combination of epidural and morphine through an IV to oral pain medicine alone over the course of my six day stay.

Unfortunately, as things worked out, the most painful part my hospital stay would not be due to this friendly fellow:

Notes: 1) Clearly, the leg still needs to be straightened out a bit from this shot. 2) What looks like blood around the pin sites is actually just little plastic clips which keep the nice soft sponges over the pin sites themselves. Why the clips are red and not, say, blue or green, is beyond me. 3) The actual blood is from the incision to break the tibia and remove one of the bone growths. 4) Really isn't that bad, is it? At least not in this photo…

But rather thanks to this more innocent-looking bystander:

This boot, which placed on my foot in the OR for reasons explained below, is more or less evil incarnate. While some aspects of my hospital stay came home with me (i.e., polar fleece blankets the hospital let us keep, the frame itself, the tools needed to take care of the frame), the boot stayed behind. And good riddance.

The worry after placing the frame was that, due to the tendency to not hold my foot at a 90˚ ankle while lying in bed pumped full of pain medicine, my Achilles tendon would shorten or something, causing some problems down the line. The solution was the following set-up:

Foot in boot. Velcro straps attached to frame pull foot towards my head, stretching tendon and avoiding bad tendon problems. Ice packs help leg not swell up to extreme amounts.

The problem with that set-up was that, unbeknownst to us prior to my hospital experience, the bottom of my foot sports an impressive array of bone growths, which, combined with my blister from the Christmas Day walk and lots of pressure from the Velcro, resulted in lots of pain (I'd say up to a six or seven at points). After two days of having the boot and complaining about the boot (the most my complaints got me, at least for the first bit, was some time where the Velcro was removed to relax the pressure on the foot), Dr. Sundberg removed the boot.

This is what he saw:

Technically this is after two to three days of healing (for the first several days of boot-free foot, the pressure sore remained fairly constant, though it's started healing now). But still.

On the whole, my hospital experience was pretty positive (save for the foot, some of the food (their ability to prepare vegetables was…questionable), delays in being discharged on my final day, and one night where I got behind on pain medications). But at the same time, the whole experience with the boot was really not fun. Though I kept complaining, without a doctor's order, the nurses refused to remove the boot, which probably made things worse.

And that was more or less how my recovery began.

In Which I Meet the Frame

As should be fairly clear, it has been far, far too long since I wrote on this blog despite (I assure you) the best of intentions. As promised, the surgery was December 26, starting at roughly 9:00 AM and ending about noon. Heading into the procedure, my leg bore no Taylor Spatial Frame. Leaving the procedure, despite my unspoken hopes, wishes, aspirations, etc., my leg bore one very new, very attached Taylor Spatial Frame. At which point the blisters I got from my Christmas walk exploded in the most dramatic way possible, I got to experience the effects of narcotics first-hand, went through my first pin site cleaning (more on that later), eventually had all the tubes removed from my body, felt free, got clean and went home on New Year's Eve to our annual viewing of It's a Wonderful Life. At which point the deadline for college applications reared its ugly head and now, at last, free of things I need to do, I have time to relax, recover, and write the blog updates I've been meaning to write for a week or more now but haven't actually written.

First up: the surgery proper.

Truth be told, it wasn't the most exciting of mornings. I got up around six, we left the house shortly thereafter, drove to St. Paul, struggled to find a parking spot. Then we were checked in, rapidly whisked off to the pre-op waiting area, visited by the anesthesiologist and surgeon. Then it was off to the OR for the procedure proper.

The fuller version to report is that, for the first time, I got some say in how my surgery was handled. For all of my previous surgeries, I was under eighteen. This surgery, at a whopping eighteen years of age, I was legally able to dictate my own fate. Practically speaking, this means I repeated whatever my parents said—my father, after all, is a transplant surgeon with something like ten thousand years of medical training and my mother practiced as a nurse in the intensive care unit for a while. Most of this dictation came in handy during my initial encounter with the anesthesiologist (who, it should be noted, was simply incredible—on top of being incredibly nice, he did a wonderful job and after the procedure I had not a lick of nausea and no aftertaste from the anesthesia itself).

To set the stage: it is the morning after Christmas. I am nowhere near as groggy as I should be despite not actually having gotten a lot of sleep. I am also very well aware that this surgery is by far and away the most serious surgery I have ever had, which makes me very nervous. I am also very well aware, thanks to previous experience, that one option of going to sleep involves being jabbed with a needle. Needles scare me to no end.

My parents pointed out that I hate the other option, which is the gas mask. This is also true, since the gas mask involves being bombarded with one of my least favorite smells (scratch that: least favorite).

I ask the anesthesiologist if there's some more desirable alternative. After a bit of negotiating, we come up with a game plan: I'll be given some oral medicine in the waiting room which will calm me down considerably. Then, in the OR proper, the IV will be inserted. I agree.

The other discussion to be had prior to my surgery was with the surgeon, Dr. Sundberg, himself, to go over what the procedure would entail, if any modifications should be made, if we understood what was going on. Also, to complete the ever-important step of marking the future surgical sites on my leg with a purple Sharpie. I think, a week post-op, some of those markings still remain.

Now, there are two major things to note from my discussion with the surgeon:

1) Apparently, plans for these procedures are flexible within reason. Given that I was already going to be operated on, I wanted to see if we could possible remove some bone growths. Target number one was the little bother on my ankle which forced me to wear larger boots on my Christmas hike. Dr. Sundberg took one look at the growth I was pointing out and said he would remove it (he did). The other growth I wanted done with was a bit more problematic. It was a massive kneecap-sized thing just beneath the kneecap on my right leg which has given me grief because it made kneeling rather difficult and because I had serious aesthetic issues with it. While Dr. Sundberg couldn't promise to remove it altogether, he did at least reduce it somewhat in size. Since I haven't done a thorough enough investigation of that part of my leg yet, I don't know how reduced it is, but the improvement is substantial.

The large growth beneath my kneecap gets Sharpie'd

The annoying thing on my ankle does not get left out of the Sharpie action

2) Taylor Spatial Frames look considerably less scary when they are not bolted onto your leg. My frame tagged along to the discussion so my parents and I could get a sense of its dimensions and weight before it was attached to me. Here it is, pre-op:

Looking almost inoffensive…

Now, a quick note on how the Taylor Spatial Frame functions: The frame can correct leg deformity in an absurd number of ways. Developed by a math PhD, it has six struts. Each strut can be individually lengthened or shortened. The doctor plugs initial measurements into a computer program and the program then prints out a menu for strut adjustments (for example, my menu includes fifteen days of strut adjustments). The goal is for the two rings on the frame to be parallel by the end. Considering that the frame seen above is set to how my leg was before starting this whole procedure, well…my main thought was, there's a reason I'm doing this.

I also got to try the frame on for size:

Note how the thing doesn't touch my skin. Also, it looks much better without pins, incisions and blood entered into frame.

For those of you wondering how life, such as walking and wearing pants, works while wearing a frame, the answer is that both are doable. On its own, the frame weights about a pound and a half, though with pins added it's probably closer to two pounds. There's a definite weight discrepancy between my legs now, but nothing I won't be able to overcome once I'm weight-bearing. Also, many loose sweatpants will fit over the thing. Since I'm still in the early days of wearing clothes and a frame at the same time (most of my time with this thing has been spent in a hospital gown, which doesn't exactly count as clothing in my book), I can't really offer any particular tips.

With those festivities completed, it was time for me to swallow some decisively non-tasty liquid which would calm me down. Then, as promised, ten to fifteen minutes later, I was wheeled back to the operating room. Compared to November 2004, the first operating room I can remember being wheeled into, I was much calmer. Maybe that was just the drugs talking, or maybe I was just more mature, but the panic wasn't there.

The operating room, from what I can remember, was fairly manageable. I could recognize many of the people in there—the OR nurse, who had come by to see me and reassure me before the procedure, the anesthesiologist and even the lights were merely reasonably bright.

Rhino, the stuffed hippopotamus from all my earlier procedures, wears a hospital wristband around its neck (I've never been able to decide on a satisfactory gender for Rhino). The sticker, at that point seven years old, was fading. I asked my anesthesiologist for a new sticker. He obliged.

I think it was then that I was moved to the operating table proper. I can't remember if somebody else moved me or if they let me move myself. I do remember that my arm was resting on a little swinging extension of the table, which I thought was very cool. With the arm swung out, the anesthesiologist placed some sort of device on my wrist which made a noise like a soda can and sprayed foam on me, numbing the site.

Then the IV went in and the surgery began.

Before the procedure, my legs looked like this:

For bonus accuracy, this picture was taken shortly before heading back into the operating room (or because we forgot to take it earlier)

Every time I see just how crooked the right leg was, I'm stunned.

Thanks to this frame, it won't look like that any more.