Help?

[Dora]

My mouth just dropped to my chest and my husband was horrified by the details of your experience! I love that you were able to fight and battle (because we all know that this is a battle) back to turn the end result positive! Keeping making those small victories and sharing them to give myself and other hope. Our families hurt with our hurt because of the things we can no longer do due to the pain and exhaustion from the pain. So the battle to overcome is worth it knowing that I will soon be back to normal and be able to do more with them. Hiking? Amazing! I can't wait for that. Congrats on everything!
Tamena

Oh it is like getting out of jail. I'm not kidding. Sometimes we're even just doing the daily "walk the mama" ( I try to get in a mile a day no matter what that is intentional) and I am amazed that I'm OUTSIDE doing this. Without a cane or feeling my bones grind and then my back freeze up. It was very very very hard on my family. I couldn't do things like say "Lets go clothes shopping for school at the mall", because the mall was a torture chamber of hard surface walking and lots of it. Now I can set out and shop a bit (with reason, I still get tired and it does hurt after an hour or so). Now granted pure hard surface walking I like to use Crocs to cushion it.

I'm even hoping to be able to play soccer with my daughter a bit and maybe join her and the spouse with their 5k endeavors. That has been my first goal. Walk a 5k (which was yesterday. I walked that and still felt good enough to go on)

I know everyone is different but barring any real individual pain management issues, or surgical complications (or anything that COULD happen) all I can say is go into recovery knowing it is painful and you have to push through it (within reason, I used a physical therapist to judge if I was ready to push the walking further and further) but the outcome will worth it. It really was reading on here that kept me focused on going through the surgery and then knowing I am going to recover with time/patience/effort.

[Dora]

Dora! So glad to hear from you. I was wondering how you were doing!!

What a wild ride you had there. :-) It sounded even wilder than the one Spicer Cub, aka knucklehead of the year, ran... I won't spoil it for you.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FpaIIKdah4

:-)

So happy that you have plans to continue riding!

Sharon

I hadn't seen that! Well they can market him as having "Dressage potential" when he flunks out of the race world Change the bend and he'd have a hell of a zig zag.

Though knucklehead of the year goes to my mare. I let a dear friend take her out this fall to grab a score. Mare proved that well behaved horses rarely make it GP and the friend bought some real estate, sprained her ankle and had to scratch. Bad, bad big baby horse.

I think I saw on another thread that you had to stop riding with your disk??? Temporary?

[Pooka1]

I hadn't seen that! Well they can market him as having "Dressage potential" when he flunks out of the race world Change the bend and he'd have a hell of a zig zag.

Good point! Spicer Cub was the fastest horse in that race considering the distance he covered. He's a star if they can keep him on the track. :-) And the jockey lost his irons on the second "excursion" and finished the race with no stirrups and a long leg!

Though knucklehead of the year goes to my mare. I let a dear friend take her out this fall to grab a score. Mare proved that well behaved horses rarely make it GP and the friend bought some real estate, sprained her ankle and had to scratch. Bad, bad big baby horse.

Oh yikes! Well, she is just a baby. And I agree they need a fire in the belly to make it to GP.

I think I saw on another thread that you had to stop riding with your disk??? Temporary?

Yes temporary!!!!!! I have been pain-free for about a month now, starting about 1.5 weeks after I stepped off and started driving up the world wide price of Motrin. Though sorely tempted to take him back now, I will be good and will leave him in training until early November. I'm going to try a test ride near the end of this month, just walking, to see if I have any pain. If I do I will leave him in training for longer. If not I will bring him back.

[Irina]

Dora,

Wow, what an experience! But the worst is over, right? Speaking of oxy - when I was weaning off I was going off and on the final dose until I completely stopped taking it. I think it's normal to take 5 mg every other day, than every two days - it will be easier on you. Everything will get better as time goes by. Keep walking and doing PT and you'll notice small improvements. Some days would seem like nothing changes, and then bum, you're able to do something you could not before! I am impressed that you're back to work already - you are a one tough woman!

[aileens]

Wow, so sorry to hear that you had a terrible time at MGH - you wouldn't think that one of the top hospitals in the country would be in that condition! I wonder what the infection rate post-surgery is for MGH? New England Baptist emphasizes that their infection rate is only 0.4% and it was one of the factors in my decision to go there. I was scared off from Beth Israel because of the teaching hospital status - oh, you were in the hospital when the new interns/residents came in for the year, that probably didn't help matters. I had the opposite issue at the Baptist - not only was it super clean, I found the younger doctors to be overly cautious and had me freaked out about a pulmonary embolism, subjecting me to an additional CT scan over the weekend when I was fresh out of my second surgery. Of course as soon as the more senior cardiologist came in on Monday, he was like "nothing to worry about, this is normal". I know it's better to be safe than sorry, and I'm glad they erred on the overly cautious side.

I'm amazed that you're back at work so soon. I'm at 8 months post-op and I still like to work one day from home.