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Well, I had my one-week-after-surgery-follow-up appointment yesterday and there was some good news and some bad news.The good news was that both surgical sites had healed well and that I had successfully made it beyond the infection-threat zone.
As instructed, I had removed the dressings the day before my appointment and had found that the wounds had healed but that I had grown dozens of small blisters all around the skin where the tape had touched. At the appointment the doctor relieved me by saying that this was not a problem but that the next time I had surgery I should let the doctors know that I am allergic to that kind of tape.
The scar itself is pretty minimal. Both sites are still a bit swollen (blood clots the doctor said) and tender, but the skin has sealed and the interior stitches have apparently dissolved.
Right. So that was the good news.
The bad news was that the fusion was not entirely successful. In fact the hip bone graft had slipped forward and was protruding into the throat (almost the exact reverse picture of when the disk in that same place had slipped out the back into the spinal column). It had not slipped so much that there was a medical risk to the throat or a stability risk to the spine, but there was definnitely a fairly large and depressing bulge.
The doctor said that he felt that there was no call to operate again and that the recovery plan/schedule did not change. Although the bone had slipped forward, the spine was still supported enough and the jutting bone posed no health problems for the throat. Further, he believed that over time, the distended portion would be worn down by swallowing and breathing and such and that after time this natural action would sand it down to a more normal level.
So he said that I should carry on with my normal schedule. By now, he said, I could remove the neck brace during the day when I was not active and when I was eating. However he felt it best that I did not return to work until mid January and that I did not fly back and forth from Singapore to KL until Feb 1.
Generally, as I understood him, so long as the brace is tight, I should be confident that I am not bending my neck enough to disrupt the ongoing fusion process. The brace will prevent drastic motion up and down. Further, the the bone had moved, it appeared to be grafting in place by now, so further movements would be avoided.
I also got a whole bunch of pain killers and sleeping pills to help me get through the night. Last night was great. I slept 7 hours and woke up only 3 times during that time for 1 or 2 minutes. I have about two weeks of sleeping pills so Barnaby might even end up with some spares.
I will be calling my cousin-in-law for advice and for a second opinion on Monday. I guess I am not totally clear why I should or should not redo the surgery and what having it or not having it again might mean. Although my doctor seemed against the idea, he did not justify this and I was a bit too shocked at the appointment to follow up with questions. It seemed all so depressing at the time. It seems to me that this partial fusion may cause permanent problems and now might be the right time to address it.
As a side note, now that I have taken my neck brace off to eat, I realize that it is still hard to swallow. I am not sure if this is due to swelling in my throat or to the extended bone or whether it is all just phsycological.
If it is the extended bone, I would say that it is a significant annoyance, as I have this constant feeling of always having something caught in my throat. It also makes me concerned about snoring and sleep apnea (stopping breathing during sleep).
PS: In retospect, I should have asked about what to expect in terms of pain after they discharged me. I should have also been much more detailed about what type of activity is okay and what type of activity is not okay (for example, the doctor said up and down motion in my neck is bad but that right and left motion is okay. What about side to side? He never said). Clearing this up would have reduced alot of my mental fears about what was happening in the week after the surgery.
There was lots and lots of pain and most of it was probably text book normal post-op pain. But if you don't know what to expect, your mind starts worrying about everything and you think that maybe the pain is meaning something worse then it is.
Honestly, looking back, this "mental stress" is just as bad as the physical pain.
PPS: One of my close friends also sent me a suggestion about how to relieve some of the stress of not being able to sleep. She suggested that I practice meditation or get some books on tape. I had actually done some meditation, though it was kinda hard to focus on not focussing when everything was painful....but books on tape would have been a damn great idea. Oh well.