Surgery Itself

The surgery itself went really smoothly. It only took seventy minutes, from the time they put my under to when I was wheeled into the recovery room. The surgeon was hoping to only have to remove four centimeters of my tibia. When he cut through the bone, however, he thought the ends looked a bit dodgy, so he took out a bit more on either end; six centimeters were taken out in total. My mum told all of this to me. My surgeon spoke to my mum right after surgery; he was too busy on Wednesday to see me in recovery. He said that the bone was clearly infected but the surrounding tissue and muscle looked good and infection free. The bone had not healed from the previous surgery in 2012 - the bone had failed to fill in where he had scrapped it away/drilled.

The treatment plan changes because of the amount of bone that had to be removed. Apparently there is a big difference in healing between a bone graft of four and six centimetres. The surgeon is not confident he would get enough bone from my hip to fill in the gap in my tibia, even with cadaver bone. So we are not doing a bone graft. Instead, I will be getting an external fixator. That is the one thing I dreaded the most, and now it will be happening. As my post from several days ago mentioned, I was scared of the fixator, terrified of the idea that something could be stuck to my bones, sticking through my skin, me unable to remove it if it hurt or if I psychologically couldn't handle it. After having some more time to think about it, and do a bit of research on line, I feel much better about it. I can handle it... I hope

Over all, I am happy with how surgery went. The infected section of my tibia was removed, the surrounding muscles and tissue look good, and the surgeon is pleased with the results. I couldn't ask for more. We can't say that I am infection free yet, because there might still be some little nasty cells floating around my leg. They should be killed by the antibiotics I am on. On the other hand, I technically don't have a bone infection anymore because, well, the bone is gone! How strange and surreal it is to say that. It kind of (ok, really) creeps me out, so when I look at my casted leg I like to think it is just norml and healing in there. I know that is not true, but whatever gets me through the next 3 months.  Only time will tell for sure if the infection is really gone. Here is to hoping I can finally beat this thing!