Sarah adds at 8pm: Heidi stopped by just before Oprah came on! I measure my days now by what is on TV you know. Above you can see our setting - me, YMA and Heidi lounging arround, reading hair magazines, gossiping. Eventually we'll start watcing some DVDs together when I have the energy! Tonight Heidi is DJ-ing for the first time since YMA arrived. She'll be at De Kreun, where a Portland band will be playing. Hopefully it goes well for her. She'll let us know. As for me, I spent the whole day in bed. The whole day! I have had to take some anti-constipation stuff and I ate lentil soup. My intestines are really suffering and giving me the run around. I guess that makes sense considering the whole lot of them were taken out of my body and clamped to the side to maintain order so they could reach my spine to put the disc in. Right now my intestines are basically telling me to screw off. I do think they will work for me tonight though. Let's hope so. I gotta get this out of me!!!! Now sleep calls again...
Sarah says:Jeez I had such a bad night! I took a pretty heavy pain killer which helped sort of till 1:30 am. From then on I was just tossing and turning again in a lot of pain all over, especially in my legs. I never had leg pain before! That's one of the big differences between having a hernia in your spine and having no disc (or just a little disc) - with a herniated disc there is almost always leg pain with it, which I have heard can be really terrible and uncomfortable. With what I had, called discopathy or degenerative disc disease there is no leg pain. In fact, if I had had leg pain, they would not have done the surgery on me as it would have had no use. A prosthetic disc is of no use at all when the cause of the problem and pain is a herniated disc. The prostheses is only used when a herniated disc is ruled out as far as I understand.
But now here I am with leg pain!! It's not constant and it could just be from the anesthesia moving through my system still. I don't know. It's early days so I'll just have to ride it out. It just makes it very hard to sleep and very hard to find a comfortable position to stay in day or night. Now I am sitting but I get up every few minutes and I take a break. I get back into bed or I walk around. I am able to get up and down stairs now with no pain surprisingly. The pain starts whenever I stop - stop to sit or to lie down. But I HAVE TO stop because moving around too much is bad for the healing process of where I was cut open (scar tissue) and for the internal cuts and stuff. The more I move around, the easier it is for scar tissue t prop up and muscles and inner wounds to sort of stretch and tear when they should be closing up, sealing and healing.
Last night in my bed I moved on my side and had the first sensation in my lower spine - I could almost feel the prostheses which is set right above my tail bone as you can see if you scroll down a couple of entries (there are two X-rays in entries from 19 December that clearly show the prostheses and the stitches). It made me nervous though I suppose it is normal to feel new things in your body. I need to ask the Dr more about this not being able to jump and not being able to arch backwards ever again as it is bad for the spine now that the fake disc is there. The parameters are too big. I really need to know exactly what I may and may not do. Plenty of sports' people get this operation and go right back to doing sports - such as running. I mean why can you run but not jump? As I understand it, it has to do with both feet hitting the ground hard together at the same time and the impact that has on the "shock" to the spine - the prosthetic disc can't take that and could push itself to deeply further into the spine and puncture something or hit a nerve. As for arching back, I can already feel why that can't be done. The disc just won't allow that movement. It jolts you if you move back to much with the arch of your back.
The prosthetic disc was a better option for me if compared to the more severe "fusion" operation because the fake disc allows movement where as the fusion stops all movement. I am really glad I opted for the fake disc. So far so good. I'll keep you posted.
Here's my favorite Post Secret entry this week.
For some reason the picture and the text about "all I want" is for her to be honest and happy - well, it brings my 7 and a half year old daughter to mind. She's at this very curious stage in her life - asking about the birds and the bees but afraid and ashamed to also because as she puts it: " a little girl like me asking these big girl questions, my oh my, I feel ashamed..." Something like that anyway. She's happily testing some borders these days, using words like "asshole" and seeing how we react - if we'll get mad... Last night I told her, to her surprise, that not only can she ask me any question she wants but she can also always ask her dad too. She couldn't believe she was allowed to ask her dad about "sexy things" (I can sense some Borat jokes in the background!). Next to all her natural curiosity about such sexy things is her fear we'll be disappointed in her - maybe about her school report for example and about her asking curious questions, etcetera... Last year and often she did really well in her class, was the first. She keeps telling me that this year she might not be the first. I could care less if she is the first but I am sure she's afraid she'll disappoint us if she isn't! All I know is that like in the Post Secret postcard all I care about is that she feels she can always be honest and that she is happy! I can't imagine I'll ever be able to stay disappointed in her for more than a minute at a time!
By the way, so many people have checked in here and have written emails or called or sent text messages! Thanks so much for all of your concern! I really appreciate it. I'll probably start answering emails and being more in touch next week after my stitches are removed!
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