After my pre-op appointment, mum and I drove from the children's hospital to the General, which is where I see my surgeon at the fracture clinic and I will be having surgery this Friday. I had been having some problems with my leg for a week or so. About a week and a half ago I started having a lot more pain in my leg. This turned out to be because to the heterotopic ossification thing (still fun to say, by the way). For those who don't know yet, something went a bit wrong with the external fixator/bone re-growing thing. Bone started growing from the opposite end, hit the portion of bone being transported downwards, and is now sticking out, and probably growing, into the back of my leg. Fun times! Not. My physiotherapist was pretty concerned about swelling in my leg (oddly, it didn't extend to my ankle) last week Thursday. On Friday, my surgeon said it would work itself out over time. A quick search online, however, suggested that local swelling is common with heterotopic ossifications aka. when your body decided to heal itself wrong. No amount of elevating my leg would shift the swelling but I hoped it would go away after surgery. After all, without that nasty bit of odd wrong unwanted bone, the inflammation would go down, right? Unfortunately, over the last day or so my leg has felt pretty terrible. My leg is still quite swollen and it had been extremely achy. I have never felt anything quite like it and it didn't seem to be going away, so mum and I decided to head to the ER after pre-op was done. After all, I probably toughed things out a bit too much with pain and my pin sites tracking (will post about that another time) so it would probably be better to get things checked out sooner than later, especially with surgery fast approaching. Plus, the doctors back home won't touch fixators, so it was best get my leg looked at before we headed back home rather to get home only to realize that we really did need to go to the hospital and have to make the drive up again. On top of the horribly uncomfortable feeling of swelling, my leg ached as if all the blood was rushing back into it every time I lowered it to the ground and the skin by the bottom two pins was slightly red.
When I got my fixator, my surgeon told me that I could come in at any time - even without an appointment - if I had concerns about/problems with my fixator. He said that he or one of his residents is always at the hospital. Today did seem to be an exception though. Mum and I didn't know if we should go to emerge or the fracture clinic. We choose the former, who told us to stick with them. I explained my situation and waited for several hours to get called into the "green zone" (I am not making that up, that is actually what it is called), where patients are seen, examined, treated and hopefully sent on their way (treat and street - again, not making this up!). We sat next to a friendly woman who had British accent and was with her young son. She arrived before me but I was called back first. So the triage system does actually work! People are really prioritized given why they are there. I though it was an urban legend, like Sasquatch!
While I waited in a private treatment room I ate my yogurt fruit cup, with granola (another hospital food I actually enjoy).
The x-ray technician who I had seen the previous Friday, a really sweet young woman, was the one who showed up to take me for my x-ray. I think she was a bit surprised to see me because I had been into the fracture clinic less than a week prior. She asked what happened, I explained; she walked along the maze like corridor to the x-ray room, I hoped along. I briefly summed up the heterotopic ossification, the upcoming surgery and what was going on with my leg. I also said that I didn't think the ER doctor really listened to what I said and I was worried my surgeon wouldn't actually be contacted. She completely understood and said she would do what she could. The long and short of it - after my x-rays where taken, she talked with someone else from the fracture clinic who then talked with another guy from the clinic. Mum and I had talked with him for a bit during Friday's appointment (he was the one who said that fixators are the stuff you read about in textbooks, not see in person). He came over to look at my leg, agreed it was swollen and a bit red, and agreed to contact my surgeon's assistant straight away (my surgeon was performing surgery at a different hospital today). This was a relief. The ER doctor said he would contact the ortho people at the hospital, but not that he would contact my ortho person. The only ortho person to do this kind of ex fix thing at the hospital. The one who is in expert in this stuff and knows my entire medical history. My ortho person, who would be performing surgery on me in less than two days!
The x-ray technician led my back through the maze to the examination room and wished me luck with the surgery on Friday. Shortly later, the nice guy from the fracture clinic showed up. He explained that he had contacted my surgeon's assistant and she said she "would run with it straight away", meaning she would tell my surgeon what was happening asap. He said this was much better than getting the ortho people currently at the hospital involved - and when he said people, he meant the only otho doctor there, a guy who wouldn't know my case from a hole in the ground. I am extremely thankful that he contacted my surgeon. He seemed almost apologetic that he couldn't do more, but my case wasn't easy, open and close so it might be hard to figure out what's going on. Shortly after, the ER doctor returned. He had gotten in touch with my surgeon or rather, we think my surgeon called the ER doctor based on what the ortho tech had said. This is what it came down to: the ER doc didn't think the leg was infected, which is good. But my surgeon wanted to get me on a second antibiotic just in case anything was brewing; given my history of infection and the upcoming surgery, this made perfect sense. He also wanted to get me on an NSAID to see if that would help reduce the swelling and the throbbing full of pressure feeling in my leg. As a result, I am on Cephalexin and Naproxen for the next week. The ER doc also relayed what my surgeon said about the upcoming surgery. My surgeon will look at my leg on Friday morning. If the blood work taken at the ER is good, the redness goes away and swelling subsides a bit, we will go ahead with the surgery as planned. If the redness and/or swelling don' go away, he might look around another section of my leg to make sure that there is no infection quietly brewing away. I don't know if these two are mutually exclusive or if both could be done at the same time. It is a wait and see until the morning off. That is all I know. But at least now my ortho guy knows what is happening. And he knows that I tough things out, so if I am feeling unwell enough to go to the ER, then I am feeling pretty unwell. Interestingly enough, the ER doctor was much more attentive and friendly once my surgeon was involved. Who knows how many patients try to get their way by saying "my doctor this or that, blah blah blah". Except in my situation, it was actually true. The initial blood work from the ER was good and I was sent home with a script for the medications mentioned. So far, my leg is feeling a bit better.
By then it was rush hour and we were pretty hungry, so mum and I stopped at IKEA to have dinner. We also bought pretty things. All the pretty things! They were setting up the summer selection today, so we got almost first dibs on the items XD And then the As Is section, which was a hit too! And that's it, time for bed.Surgery is literally tomorrow. *gulp*
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