Surgery Day

Today, I am 12 days post-op and I finally feel good enough to return to posting.  I will be recapping the last two weeks in the next few posts. I adjusted the dates to reflect the days that I would have published the posts, had I been able.

Now on to my SURGERY experience!

On Tuesday morning, January 15th, 2013, I reported to the hospital just after 8 am.  I was informed that the surgery before mine had been cancelled, so my surgery got pushed up. Luckily, this made me the first surgery of the day for my surgeon.

After giving away a precious amount of blood for yet another pre-op blood test and my IV being painfully inserted, my bed was rolled to the pre-op staging area.  My surgeon came by for a visit and initialed on my left (surgery) leg.  I also had a consult with the anesthesiologist.

A few minutes later, it was time for what they call a "time-out."  I said goodbye to my Mom, and the next thing I remember is the recovery room.  I had been put under temporary anesthesia, given a nerve block, and then wheeled to the surgery room where I was put under general anesthesia for the surgery.

According to my mother, the surgery only took an hour and a half!  This is really fast for all of the procedures that I had done, but my orthopedic surgeon is very experienced and my case was not complicated by things like old age, arthritic conditions, extensive degeneration, obesity, etc.

When I woke up in the recovery room (around 12 pm), the first thing I remember the doctor/nurse asking me is to wiggle my toes on my surgery foot.  Much to everyone's surprise, I was able to do it.  Since I had been given a nerve block, all sensation and pain should have been blocked for 16-24 hrs after my surgery. When I was able to wiggle my toes, I immediately knew that this meant bad news for me and the pain I would be experiencing.

The next thing I remember is crying due to the excruciating pain I was feeling in my heel.  Of course, it had just been sawed off and repositioned with a titanium screw drilled down the center.  They shot some medicine into my IV and put an ice pack under my heel.  If the nerve block would have worked, I wouldn't have been feeling any pain at this point.

They then curiously inquired about my age, level of fitness, and what sport had caused the injury.  I blurted out marathons....running marathons got me here.  They wanted this information because my resting heart rate was hovering around 115 bpm.  This is extremely high for someone my age (25) and for my level of fitness, which meant I was experiencing tachycardia (high HR).

I ended up staying in the recovery area for several hours because the hospital was really booked that day, and they couldn't find me a room to go to.  So much for all of those pre-planning appointments. Around 3 pm, I was finally wheeled to a room.

By 5 pm that day, I had already been visited by just about everyone that works at the hospital (nurses, doctors, physician assistants, hospital coordinators, social workers, PT, etc).  All I wanted to do was sleep...and I was hungry.  I hadn't eaten anything since midnight the night before.

The physical therapists (PT) came and required me to do a few leg exercises and to crutch a short distance down the hallway and back to my room.  They were surprised that I could get out of bed, stand up, and crutch all on my own.  I reminded them that having one ankle out of the game did not affect the strength in the rest of my body.

The rest of the day, I remained in a state of high pain (approximately 9 out of 10).  No matter how many "breakthrough" pain shots of dilaudid (hydromorphine) or how many times I pressed the button for the pain drip (same drug), nothing could take my pain level down.

The first night was rough as well.  I was only able to get between 30-45 mins of sleep at a time.  In addition to dealing with the pain, all of the IV fluids and liquids they had me drinking caused me to go to the bathroom 16 times between 10:30 pm and 6 am.  Since I was hooked up to the IV pole and I needed both of my hands for my crutches, I had to call the nurse to help me to the bathroom every time!  She was really nice, so I got lucky.