STILL LIFE WITH FIXATOR

I went into my doctor's appointment today with very low expectations. I was only hoping to get some sense of when I'd get my fixator off. And get some sense of it I did.

My next doctor's appointment isn't until September 11th. So that's 42 more days of life with fixator before my doctor and I are even going to discuss taking it off.

It's a bit of a shock, since I really thought it'd be off by the end of August, or early September at the latest. Now it's looking like the end of September will be the earliest surgery date, because there are still a few steps in between my September 11th visit and getting the fixator removed.

The next step is transferring some of the weight bearing from the fixator to my bone. My doctor might do this on the September 11th visit, or he might still think it's too soon. Once the weight is transferred, we wait... I don't know how long.

Then when my doctor thinks my bone is ready, he'll take the fixator off, but leave the pins in. This is in case I re-break my leg right away. If I'm not broken after a couple of weeks, he'll take the pins out.

So realistically, I'm looking at mid-October before I'm appliance-free. Since it's going to be living on my leg for another two and half months, I think it's time I named my fixator. Any suggestions?

SMACK REPORT

I'm down to one and a half Vicodin a day. At this rate, the weaning process will be over in one week, with next Sunday being my last day on the smack.

The weaning process I chose was to go down half a pill every three days. At one point in the lengthening, I was taking eight Vicodin a day. After the horrible failure of trying to quit cold turkey, I went back up to six Vicodin a day and started my weaning process there.

The withdrawal symptoms have been ever-present, and have ranged from mild to moderate. Here are all the possible Vicodin withdrawal symptoms:

-Restlessness
-Muscle pain
-Bone pain
-Insomnia
-Diarrhea
-Vomiting
-Cold flashes
-Goose bumps
-Involuntary leg movements
-Watery eyes
-Runny nose
-Sneezing
-Loss of appetite
-Irritability
-Yawning
-Nausea
-Chills
-Sweating

Except for vomiting, I've had them all to varying degrees. The restlessness has been the constant, most prominent symptom, followed closely by the stomach issues, with the weird cold-like symptoms coming in a close third.

It's funny how the weaning process is also called "stepping down," because it really has felt like walking down a flight of stairs. Certain steps were steep, and the withdrawal symptoms were intense, like, for some reason, when I went from four pills to three and a half. At other times, I felt like I was on a plateau, with only mild withdrawal symptoms for days at a time.

Now that I'm almost off the Vicodin, my symptoms seem to be more of the irritability, insomnia and involuntary leg movement variety. One night this past week I couldn't fall asleep for the life of me, and last night I fell asleep okay, but woke up at 2:00 a.m. unable to stop moving my legs back and forth. And I've been ornery as hell, irritated by every little thing about this leg lengthening process that hadn't irritated me before.

I've read that after you're off the Vicodin completely, withdrawal symptoms last for about another week. So hopefully in two weeks, I'll be symptom free!

THE MINORS

Most of the major concerns I had going into this surgery are now behind me. The pain of the lengthening, the worry about nerve damage, and the fear that my bone wouldn't grow are all non-issues now. The only major concern that remains is that when I do get my fixator off, I don't re-break my leg immediately.

But the minor concerns are still hanging around, namely the ankle swelling and the pin site discomfort.

I can't seem to keep my ankle swelling down for any length of time. The minute I'm not elevating it, it comes back. And when I'm at work, it's impossible to keep it elevated all the time. Also the more I walk on it, the more swollen it gets. My physical therapist told me that as I walk more and more, my ankle swelling will dissipate. That hasn't been the case yet, but I'm still not walking anywhere near normally, so hopefully once I do, the ankle swelling won't be an issue.

And my pins sites, though generally healthy, are still causing problems from time to time.

Here's a picture of my top two pin sites:



If you really want to get a good look at the sites, click on the picture to enlarge it. You can see some yellow looking stuff in the corner of the one on the left, which is the top pin site. Right now my top pin site is very stingy in that area, so I've upped my antibiotics to four a day for two days to prevent an infection from developing.

I've been using Bacitracin around my top two pin sites to help with the painfully dry skin, but it doesn't seem to be helping. I tried some A&D ointment around the area, and that helped, but my skin also turned red after a few days. How something used to treat diaper rash could have given me a rash, I don't know, but I guess I can't continue to use it now.

Here are my bottom two pin sites:



They have been pretty much fine this entire time. I haven't had the dryness or stinging and itching around them that I have with my top two pin sites. I have no idea why that is, but I'll take it.

Mia and her mom, Jenny, came by for a lovely little visit the other night. Here's a picture of them and their cute haircuts:



Jenny has been through her own orthopedic surgery and recovery ordeal, so it's been great to have her experience and wise advice helping me along the way. Also she brought me flowers and apple cider from the Union Square farmer's market. Mia brought me a vintage Playboy magazine. There's not a boob to be found anywhere in it. It's full of like, articles, and stuff. Boo!

IT'S ALIVE!

I took my first unassisted steps yesterday! I pretty much looked like Frankenstein, with my arms out in front of me for balance and my steps heavy and awkward.



But sweet Jesus it felt good. And I'm feeling pretty good in general. Every day I feel a little stronger and like I have a little bit more energy. I'm starting to feel like myself again, and am only now realizing how out of it and somewhat depressed I was this whole time.

I have my focus back, which I didn't totally realize was gone. During the lengthening, I couldn't even focus enough to watch TV. Now I'm starting to go through the stacks of DVDs I collected for my recovery.

We just finished watching The Office (American version) seasons 1&2, which were awesome. I don't think there's a bad episode in the bunch. Neither Casino Royale nor Little Children lived up to the hype for me, but I thought both were solid. And my guilty pleasure confession is that we've been watching reruns of The O.C. on SoapNet. Maybe one day soon I'll even pick up a book!

I'm starting to feel like my daily experience is now what I envisioned it would be when I signed up for this surgery. I'm tired all the time, my leg is sore, physical therapy is hard, living with the fixator is uncomfortable, but it's all managable. I'm still needing 10-11 hours of sleep a night, but I'm getting through the days okay.

My parents just booked a 7-day, western Caribbean family cruise for all of us for next April. The last family cruise we went on was two years ago, and my back pain was so bad that I couldn't do a lot of things I wanted to do. Just knowing that I'll be back pain free for this one makes this whole thing already seem worthwhile.

Oh, and I got a care package from Sheila yesterday... thanks Shix!

THE MOST EXPENSIVE THING I'VE EVER OWNED

I got my hospital bill the other day, from the Hospital for Joint Diseases and Orthopaedic Intitute (sic). I wonder how many reams of stationery they printed up before they noticed that typo.

My total bill comes to $35,132.75. Through the miracle of health insurance, my portion is only $250.00.

Here's the breakdown of the charges:

Two days in a semi-private room: $4,820.00
Pharmacy: $113.75
Medical Supplies: $958.00
Other Supplies: $900.00
X-Rays: $258.00
Operating Room Services: $7,500.00
Anesthesia: $795.00
Physical Therapy: $109.00
Drugs: $32.00
Recovery Room: $1,050.00

That comes to $16,535.75. So the remaining $18,597? That's the price of my fixator!

I had toyed with the idea of asking my doctor if I can keep the fixator after he takes it off. Knowing how expensive it is, I can't imagine I'll be allowed to now. Though on the other hand, I did buy it. Well, my insurance company bought it. So technically, it's mine. Maybe I will be able to keep the most expensive thing I've ever owned.

Maybe I can trade it in for a car.

SEVEN WEEK ITCH

Today is seven weeks since my surgery. Seven weeks of wearing the fixator. Seven weeks of being on crutches. Seven weeks of hair growth on my right leg.

I'm feeling a distinct seven week itch. I alternate between feeling like it'd be okay that I have the fixator if only I could walk, and feeling like it'd be okay if I couldn't walk if only I didn't have the fixator. Essentially, I'm sick of having the fixator and I'm sick of not being able to walk.

There's some promising progress on the walking front, though. Yesterday in physical therapy I rocked some serious one crutch walking, and for the first time felt like someday it will be possible to walk unaided again.

But I bummed myself out by looking at my xrays, which show such huge gaps in my bones that I'm starting to realize that this fixator ain't coming off anytime soon. My doctor says that he's in "no rush" to take it off, and I agree with him, in principle. I certainly don't want it taken off before my bone is completely healed. Re-breaking my leg would be beyond horrible.

At my next doctor's appointment in two weeks, my doctor is going to transfer some of the weight off of my fixator and onto my bone. Right now the fixator is bearing all of the weight while the bone consolidates.

Once the bone is completely healed, my doctor said he'll take off the fixator, but leave the pins in my leg. In the sweet Jesus don't let this happen case that I re-break my leg, he can just slip the fixator back on over the pins.

If after one or two weeks of having only the pins in my leg and no breakage, he'll remove the pins. So I'm looking at the end of the summer at the earliest before I'm free of all the metal. About another seven weeks. Which puts me at the mid-way point of this whole process. That's a somewhat depressing thought. At least the worst is behind me!

Vicodin addiction update: I'm down to 3.5 pills a day, and I'm really starting to feel the effects of the weaning process. The last few nights I've been incredibly restless and it's been very hard to sleep. I'm sneezing a lot and generally feel like I have a cold. But once I take a Vicodin, the sneezing goes away almost immediately. I don't even feel anything when I take a Vicodin, I just feel normal again. That's some messed up shit.

TRYING TO LOSE A CRUTCH OR TWO

As anyone who has ever been on crutches knows, being on crutches sucks. Just from crutching around my office for three days last week, I exhausted my arms so much that I could barely lift them the following few days. But I'm hoping that now that the initial soreness has decreased, it won't get this bad again.

So now the goal is to get off of the crutches. I've made it down to one crutch... for a few steps at a time, that is. But it's progess! I was having some pretty bad knee pain during physical therapy, but after talking to my doctor about it, and getting the "it's nothing" speech, I've been pushing through it and it seems to be okay.

And the more I weight bear, the more aches and pains I have in my leg, which strangely enough makes me feel better about my knee pain. All my muscles, and soft tissues, etc., have all stretched an inch in only three weeks, so it makes sense that they would feel tight and painful as I try to put weight on them.

I have my next doctor's appointment on July 31st, and I want to walk into it, without crutches. I admit that this is mostly because I know my doctor will yell at me if I walk in with crutches, but hey, I'll take the extra motivation wherever I can find it.

Finally, here's an xray of my leg:



You can see the break in the tibia and the break in the fibula, each an inch wide, and the new bone that's already starting to grow in. You can also see the two screws, one at my ankle and one at my knee, and the four pins that go practically entirely through my tibia. It still grosses me out to see that. Eesh.

Here's an xray of both my legs as I'm standing up:



This is the xray he used to measure my leg lengths and determine that the lengthening is over. You can really see in this xray that my right knee is now higher than my left knee. You can't tell at all, though, by just looking at me. It's really only 1/2 an inch higher than the left and isn't noticable at all, so I was suprised to see how much it showed up in the xray.

BAD BLOGGER

I've been horrible about blogging. Part of it is not my fault, since we're still without internet at home. Or rather, we sometimes have internet, and then only certain pages will open. They are finally supposed to fix it on Saturday, after almost a month. Die a slow death, Time Warner Cable.

I've also been beyond exhausted, since this week is my first week back to work. Even though I've been crutching around the apartment for over a month, the amount of crutching I've had to do at work, which is only to get to and from the bathroom, has destroyed my arms. My left arm feels like it's going to fall off. It hasn't been this sore since that one (and only) boxing class I took years ago.

But I did have a doctor's appointment yesterday, and my lengthening is officially done! My legs are even!

Check it out:



Now I just have to wear the fixator until my new bone grows and consolidates. I go back to the doctor in three weeks for another set of xrays, and hopefully about three weeks after that, I'll be fixator free!

For some reason, the nurse gave us my xrays from this recent doctor's visit, so I'm going to try to take pictures of them and post them, hopefully on Saturday when our FUCKING INTERNET IS FIXED!

Not much is going on otherwise. Still weaning myself off of the Vicodin like the addict that I am. We had a mouse in the apartment this morning. Kelly tried to trap it and kill it, while I sat helplessly on the couch and watched, but she only managed to stun it with a broom before it scurried behind a bookcase. We duck-taped it back there until our super could come over and kill it proper.

Here's a picture of Lamar playing on my fixator:

BACK ON THE SMACK

Tomorrow I am finally, after five and half weeks, and two weeks later than I had planned, going back to work. I was supposed to go back to work on Monday. And I was completely ready to. My leg lengthening was done. My physical therapy was going great, and my leg didn't hurt at all. And because it didn't hurt at all, I stopped taking the Vicodin.

Here's another bit of information to add to the list of information I sure wish my doctor had bothered to tell me: stopping Vicodin cold turkey is about the worst thing that you can do to your body.

First it started out like flu symptoms. Stomach ache, coughing, sneezing, fever, chills and sweats. I thought I had somehow managed to get sick just as I was supposed to go back to work. Then my stomach got much, much worse.

At some point over the weekend, as I was hovering near death in the bathroom, it occurred to me that maybe instead of the stomach flu, I was going through Vicodin withdrawal.

I emailed my doctor (still on vacation, mind you) about my withdrawal. He wrote back that I should have stepped down my dosage instead of quitting cold turkey. Hey, thanks for the information!

By then, I was so deep into my withdrawal that I thought it couldn't get any worse. So I figured, with all I had already been through, that I might as well not take any more Vicodin and just tough it out.

And then it got worse. I don't want to get too graphic, but it was like fire coming out of me. Because of the time difference, I couldn't call my doctor. So we called Kelly's brother-in-law's father, who is an ER doctor. He told me to take a Vicodin. So I did.

Then we called Markus, soon to be MD, PhD, and he helped us figure out if I could take some Immodium, since the pharmacist at Duane Reade suggested to Kelly that in combination with my antibiotic it could be potentially fatal. Oh, let's not be dramatic or anything, Duane Reade pharmacist.

Markus busted out his pharmacology textbook and assured us that I would not, in fact, die if I took some Immodium. So take some I did, and in about an hour and a half of taking that and the Vicodin, I started to feel a little better. I took a couple more Vicodin overnight, and by the morning I felt like life might be worth living again.

So, I'm officially addicted to Vicodin. I now have myself on a step down program (aided in part by advice Kelly found on a Vicodin addicts online forum) which has me decreasing my dosage by half a pill every three days until I'm off of it. Which will be around the end of July.

I could really care less what my doctor thinks of this plan. No way am I going through these symptoms again. Don't do drugs, kids. Those movies like The Basketball Diaries and Trainspotting ain't lying.

Oh, and Heather came by on Friday night for a visit, which turned out to be right before all this madness started to happen. Here she is pointing to the beautiful handmade "Happy End of Lengthening" card she made me: