Surgery

What a fool I was to think I would go 3 weeks without seeing a doctor. This week I have 2 doctor appointments - Tuesday with an interventional radiologist at Kaisers spine center in Oakland, and tomorrow with a psiatrist (thats a physical medicine doc) locally. But good news followed my 1st appt and I hope good news follows my appt tomorrow.

Tuesday was cool. I got to look at x-rays of my spine. Almost every vertebrae was broken via compression fracture. The doc was cool too. Our appt lasted 1 1/2 hours and I felt like I was his only patient. Dr T., the radioligist, explained everything about vertebroplasty/kyphoplasty. I will have a series of 3 operations during which he will repair 3 vertebrae per procedure. More is dangerous. There will be a minimum of 3 weeks between procedures. He's done about 400-500 of these, and never had a problem. My 1st procedure will be next Wednesday 11/14. We will stay in Oakland at a hotel the night before and the night after the procedure, which is done under a local anesthesia with no overnight stay in the hospital. With any luck, I can schedule this out to be completed no later than the 2nd week in January. Dr T will use a comination of the 2 procedures depending on the vertebrae and the fracture. He states that he has not seen the height gain with kyphoplasty described in the literature. He expects the procedures to reduce my pain at least by 75% if not more, and eliminate the hunching over when I walk. He also told me that the procedure may bring on more fractures, but they would deal with them.

The cement that they use starts out the consistancy of toothpaste, hardens after 5 minutes to the consistancy of clay, and then becomes solid like cement. The vertabrae can never be broken again. If they dig me up 200 years from now and examine my spine, they're going to wonder what the hell went on with me, with a cement spine.

After this is all over, Arlene and I will go away for a week. We both need it. I'm so happy that there is an end in sight to my misery.