ΟstǝøʍyƜhat?: Actual Update

October 9th – I had an appointment with my orthopedic surgeon at 8:15 am (wow is that early if you are used to sleeping 12 hours a day and getting up no earlier than (9:30 am. Oh, and recovering from surgery).

Ready for the day!

● Old cast was removed. Leg is looking good, albeit the swelling and now being extremely hairy. My leg used to look like a hobbit but now it looks more like a wookie.

● Surgeon says it is time to schedule surgery number five – fixator time! Should I put an exclamation mark there? Yes, re-growing my tibia is exciting because it brings the promise of walking but really, who actually wants a fixator? Regardless of the answer, I signed the necessary consent forms.

● Surgeon says he wants to grow 0.75 mm of bone a day, instead of 1 mm. The fixator will stay on for four months instead of the two we were originally told about and the three months discussed at the previous appointment. This means it will take about 80 days to regrow the bone instead of 60. The fixator will be left as is for two weeks after surgery, then 80 days of bone growing fun, followed by several weeks to makes sure things are consolidating. I will have about 125 days of fixator fun or, in other terms, being a living Meccano set.

● I will be getting a nerve block for this surgery to help with pain control (hopefully it will obliterate the worst of the pain). My mum brought this up and the surgeon thought it was a brilliant idea. I am both excited and nervous about this as I have never had one before but anything must be better than the amount of pain I was in after the previous surgery, right?

● I will have surgery number six in the new year, probably at the very end of March, to remove the fixator and put a plate in. There is a 50% chance I will still need a bone graft once the frame comes off (although much smaller than any bone graft we had originally anticipated before we found out I would get an external fixator instead). The external fixator compresses things a bit, so once it is removed there might be a gap between the ends of my tibia. A bone graft would wrap around the nail that will go through my tibia and fill this gap.

● My surgeon mentioned that I will be getting physiotherapy once the external fixator comes off (a good seven months after the surgery in August to remove the infected section of my tibia). I am super excited about this because I have never ever been offered physio despite everything I have been through with my leg (not even the first seven months in a cast when I had a different surgeon).

● I got a new cast - this time green fiberglass! This one if just a regular lower leg cast that extends higher than normal to prevent any twisting in my leg that could break the bone cement holding my leg together. I am still allowed to walk on it.

At this point there is no sign of any infection, which is wonderful! We are still sticking with the “theoretically gone”. It will be quite some time before we start saying the infection is actually gone. I don’t need to see my surgeon before the next surgery and I will see infectious disease on Nov. 17^th to have antibiotics prescribed for the duration of my time with the external fixator.

The surgeon asked me when I wanted the next surgery. I had some plans already set up for late October since I was not expecting surgery number five until mid-November. I said any date after Oct. 27^th.

On Oct. 14^th I got a call from the hospital with a surgery date (Nov. 19^th at 8:00 am) and a pre-op appointment date (Nov. 5^th at 11:15 am).