Results tagged “spine fusion” from KatScan

I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but this is a very serious product review of a medical device that claims it can completely relieve pain, "remind the body to heal itself", and strengthen the body's immunity, and many, many other medical claims.

About two months ago, I was contacted by a woman named Cheryl who said she had an amazing product that would help me, help me with my back pain, blood pressure, all kinds of things, and she would love it if I would try it out and review it on my blogs.
I agreed to test it out and I have been using it as she told me to ever since receiving it in the mail.
It's called the Amega Amwand, and it claims to use "zero point energy" to help the body heal itself.
I HATE giving these people a link, but I feel that I need to so that people WILL NOT fall for this scam, I need to warn people that this thing is a total scam and costs hundreds of dollars ($304.00) to buy, and all it is is the body of a ball point pen minus the ink and ink chamber.
It is one solid piece of metal shaped like a pen, it looks exactly like the image above.
You can pretty much tell that this thing is a scam by the url of the website where they sell it.
The url to purchase this thing has the words "CASHRICHES" in it!
Another of their sites is just one big page all about positioning yourself to get in on this amazing money making scheme!

Cheryl told me that in order to get the most benefits from it, to use it properly, all that I needed to do was to simply "wave" the Amwand over my body, the areas that are in pain, in a clockwise circular motion for 30 minutes, 5 times per day.
"It's vital" she said.
She even told me to "wand" my son Mark with it as well because he is having bad back pain too.
Mark laughed at the idea, but he let me use it on him for the entire two months that I've had it and have been testing it out.
Below are the claims that this "wand" can supposedly do to help people.

Usage of AmWand Can:

* Discharge blockages in the body
* Clear distortions in our bio energetic field
* Facilitate the body in healing
* Energize food and drink increasing potency of the minerals & vitamins within them
* Use it on our pets and plants to supplement any energy deficiencies that they have
* Balance and energize imbalances your body may be experiencing
* Help to remove aches, pains and other discomforts
* Lift the face...tightens the skin
* Energize our environment in which we live

Amega AmWand Benefits Can:

* Help the body obtain homeostasis condition
* Help the body's bio-energetic field to source Zero Point Energy
* Relieve aches and pain
* Neutralize harmful elements (energetically) from the liquid we drink, & food we eat
* Energize the skin providing a "face lift" with noticeable improvement
* Energize creams and oils for better absorption of nutrients
* Facilitate and strengthen the flow of energy in our body
* Stimulate bodily functions and strengthens immunity
* Help the body to look and feel younger

You also can have quicker and stronger nail and hair growth, and a greater resistance to tooth decay that is visibly seen. The lifting of the face with noticeable improvement has also brought forth an additional and extremely high interest.

When water is treated with the Zero Point Energy Wand and then used in conjunction with any supplements, they can be absorbed much more quickly and efficiently, and effectively by the body's cells.

I have used the Amega Amwand every single day, five times per day for 30 minutes each session as I was told to do.
I even "wanded" my water with it as I was told to do.
I am here to tell you that the Amega Amwand did absolutely nothing at all for me.
It did not relieve any aches, pains, or other discomforts, it has not helped reduce my blood pressure, and I saw no noticeable improvement in my hair, nails, or face.
It has not helped me to look or feel younger.
It has not helped or strengthened my immunity, as a matter of fact, I've been really sick several times during the last 2 months, and it did not help me get better faster, or at all.
It did not do a single thing that it claims it can do.
The Amega Amwand is a total scam and I feel the need to tell people the truth before they fall for this scam and waste hundreds of dollars on it.

Every day, millions of people live in pain and are desperate to be free from that pain, and would take any kind of supplement or other types of self care items to try and relieve that pain.
If you live with chronic pain or know someone who lives with chronic pain, then you know how desperate you can feel to get any kind of relief, and there are very unscrupulous people and companies out there who know that desperation and are ready and poised to take full advantage of those people who live in pain.
There are thousands of products on the market already that make thousands of claims that their product can help you be free from pain, and people buy them because they are so desperate.
This product, the Amega Amwand, is one of those products that claims so many amazing things that it can do for you, but it does absolutely nothing.
NOTHING.

The existence of zero point energy is not controversial although the ability to harness it is.
No device claimed to operate using zero point energy has been demonstrated to operate as claimed. No plausible description of a device drawing useful power from a source of zero point energy has been given. Thus, current claims to zero point energy-based power generation systems currently have the status of pseudoscience.
That means that this Amega Amwand is a total scam.
It is pseudoscience, fake, not what it claims to be.

Amega Global makes all kinds of products that claim to use zero point energy to help the body heal itself.
They make the Amwand for $304.00, the AmPendant in silver for $394.00, another AmPendant in Rose Gold for $404.00, and another AmPendant in bronze for $409.00.
They also make "food" that ranges in price from $52.00 up to $270.00.

They make all kinds of other products that claim to use this zero point energy, and they are selling them to people that are desperate to be free from pain, there are testimonials out there that claim this thing really works, but I can tell you after testing it on both myself and Mark for almost two full months, that it DOES NOT work.
I really feel the need to warn people about this new self care, help the body heal itself, scam.
I do not want to see anyone at all fall for this, and that's why I have used the name of it, Amega Amwand, as many times as possible so that it will get indexed in Google and other search engines, and be in the search results for it so that people will find this post (cross posted to My Single Mom Life as well) and learn that it is a total scam.
I feel very strongly the need to warn people so that they do not fall for this scam and waste hundreds of dollars on any of these Amega Global products that will do absolutely nothing for them except remove hundreds of dollars from their bank accounts.

Please, if you or someone that you know suffers from chronic pain and have either been told about the Amega Amwand, or they read about it, and are thinking of buying the Amega Amwand, please, direct them to this post.
I would not ever lie to my readers, this product, the Amega Amwand, is a total scam, it does not work as it claims to.
I tried and tested the product 5 times per day for 30 minutes each time, for two months, and saw no noticeable improvement in pain relief or energy, or any signs of looking and feeling younger either.
The Amega Amwand is a total scam.

Back when I first received the Amega Amwand, I brought it with me to one of my pain management appointments so that I could get my doctor's opinion of it. I took out the box and explained to him what the distributor Cheryl was selling to people at a cost of $304.00 and a promise that it could heal people's ailments and completely relieve pain. He read the little pamphlet, looked at the wand very closely, and then he asked me if I had actually paid for this thing. I told him no, of course not, and explained to him how I received it and what my plan to review it was. He told me, and I quote,

"Kat, you have to use your websites to tell people about this. This is probably the single biggest medical scam that I've seen in the last five years, and believe me, I've seen a lot of them. If you have your blogs (he looked kinda confused on what a blog really is) and the power to reach as many people as possible, you absolutely must tell people the truth. And Kat, the truth is that this thing is 100% garbage. It is a lie packaged and sold to desperate people, people who are so desperate to be free from pain that they will do just about anything they can to get relief. You have the ability to help people not waste their time and their money. Use the power you have to do something good. If you just spare even one person from wasting their money and their time, then you've done something great. Thank you for bringing this to my attention, I am going to go to the website and then email this to as many of my colleagues as I can, they need to know about this too and try to stop their patients from getting scammed if any of their patients happen to mention it or ask their doctors if they've heard of being healed by zero point energy."

He then laughed and repeated the phrase "zero point energy" as he jotted down the website urls for both of the websites that Cheryl gave me.
When I got back home and was going back over the pamphlet and stuff that came in the box with the wand, I found the certificate of authenticity, and one thing that I noticed on this "Certificate of Authenticity" that comes in the beautifully padded and silk lined box, is the ultra fine print typed so freaking small that I had to get my jewelry making magnifying glass out in order to be able to read it.
On the very, very bottom of the back of the certificate of authenticity, it reads in super tiny fine print exactly as follows:

DISCLAIMER: These statements have not been evaluated by The Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or physical condition.

These lying scammers know full well that this freaking magical "Amega Amwand" absolutely cannot treat, cure, or heal any ailment of physical condition.
They know that it cannot relieve pain, the number one claim that they use in their selling techniques!
The FDA won't approve this damn thing because they know that it's a total fraud, and these scammers admit, right there in super fine print, that this thing cannot do any of the things that they claim that it can!!

I will be updating this post on both of my blogs with new information or links to other articles about the Amega Amwand and what a total fraud it is, as I find or come across them.
If I find other reviews, I will link them, if I find video reviews, I will link to them as well, and when I see my doctor on Tuesday at 11am, I will be updating him about my "progress" after using it for two months.

**EDIT**
Added 2 links on 6/22/2010

Here is a link to a Youtube video and a post about the Amega Amwand scam.
I am not a hamster, Boob product: Amega Amwand.

Amega Amwand: Medical Scam, at the blog I Am Not A Hamster.


Amega Amwand Is a Scam at Blahvert.

The comments on this post at a money making blog are quite interesting, especially one by someone named Chadi.

FTC disclosure;
I was not compensated in any way for this post.
I received the Amega Amwand for free to test it and review it, and I have to send it back.
It is not mine to keep.
There is absolutely no free product to keep, or compensation received for reviewing this product.
The opinions expressed here are my own, but some of the wording has been taken directly from the Amega Global websites where they either sell the product or hype the product to get people to become distributors of these products.

You know what sucks wicked bad for me?
I have all of this wicked awesome fitness equipment in my house, and I can't use any of it.
I can't use any of it because of my back surgeries, because A) I can barely move to use it, and B) my doctors don't want me using it because it could do all kinds of damage to my spine and all of the equipment inside of my body.
Using my elliptical and weights, lifting weights, could actually cause me to damage some of my implants and fixtures, I could make them rip off of my spine if I do something too much or too hard, and then I'd have to have all kinds of surgeries again.
That would really suck, but it still sucks because I'm so out of shape, I'd love to get in shape, turn all of this fat into muscle, not be so damn flabby.
I've lost a wicked lot of weight, I was at 200 pounds, and I am now down to just 155 pounds after almost a year.
It will be a full year come July 5th. I was 197 pounds, and I now weigh just 155, so I've lost 42 pounds, but I'm all flabby in the gut, I would love to be able to do sit ups and get all of that flab turned into muscle.
That would be awesome, but I can't.

Please forgive my blogging absence since like last Tuesday I think?
Yeah, Tuesday.
Anyway, I've been battling an illness again, and this past weekend was pure hell for me and the teens.
I had a ton of stuff going on, I caught some sort of stomach thing that Mark had caught but in me, it mutated into the stomach thing spawned from the very bowels of hell, and it was also the "end of the month" pain medicine wise, so I was short a few days just like every month which resulted in my stomach being even sicker than the stomach thing that I was dealing with.
But I got the pain medicine taken care of by my doctor, but the stomach thing stayed and got worse, and worse, and worse as each day passed.
I was so sick that I was completely unable to eat or even drink anything at all for about 3 days, and if I tried to take even super small sips of water to wash down my pain meds and now some seriously strong antibiotics and phenergan that the ER gave me on Saturday to try and stop me from vomiting,  I ended up even more violently ill than I was within just minutes of taking them.
All the vomiting and diars I was dealing with is not exactly the best weight loss supplement, but I did drop 9 pounds from Wednesday through to today.
Hey, weight loss is weight loss for this fat chick, it all counts to me no matter how I lose it. 
But I was so ill that the teens got really scared for me and made me go to the hospital again on Sunday, and that was the absolute worst day of my weekend.

I only have brief recollections of actually getting to the hospital on Sunday, I know that my friend Mindy took me, that Sebastian called her, and I recall being put in a wheelchair, and then the next thing I remember is waking up on a hospital bed in the ER with an IV in my right arm and 2 doctors standing over me and talking about my high white cell count and a massive infection that they couldn't locate just yet.
While I was out, they drew blood and ran tests, ran a cath line and took urine samples, and they were talking about the possibility of cancer.
Again.
I have an unnaturally high white cell count, it's always been high, but it's been extremely high since my first spine fusion in 2006, but apparently it was really super high this time, and so they threw around words like cancer, again.
I've already been down this road, I've already had tons of cancer tests, but here they were, talking about it and I admit to getting, and still being, really, really scared.
I was in the ER on Sunday from about 3pm until almost 10pm, they pumped in bags and bags of fluids because I was so dehydrated, they gave me about 6 doses of Zofran because it was obvious that the phenergan hadn't helped me at all, and about 6 doses of dilaudid for all of the stomach cramping and pain that I was in, but I continued to be violently ill, so violently ill that they had to bring in a portable toilet for my room.
I know, TMI, and it was embarrassing and humiliating, and I hated every damn second of it, but being hooked up to an IV and getting sick so rapidly, I wouldn't have been able to make it to a bathroom if I tried.
Puking and the diars at the same time, ugh, and the nurses kept coming in to check on me and clean me up, and there was some sort of brownish liquid in my vomit that concerned the nurses, so they went and got the doctors again, and they kept calling the lab to make them hurry up with the blood test results so they could try to figure out what I had so that they could treat me properly.
By the time they released me, they still didn't have the lab results back yet, so they said they would fax them to my doctors ASAP, and then they sent me home with some more antibiotics and a script for Reglan which is another anti-nausea medication and it also "speeds up the the rate at which the stomach empties into the intestines."
They gave me that in the hopes that whatever this thing, infection, whatever the hell it is that is in my gastrointestinal tract, will get the heck out.

Taking some hgh supplements for my spine and bone growth.
I know that hgh can help build up muscle and tissue, and some reports say that it helps with reversing the aging process or slowing it down, but I really wonder if it would help stimulate the new bone growth that my body needs to produce to make the new fake vertebrae that I have as strong as they need to be, and the titanium rods and screws, even stronger.
Spine fusion isn't just about inserting rods and screws and that's supposed to keep you all together and better, but spine fusion actually means to grow new bone over the implants and the fake vertebrae to make the spine even stronger than it was before.
I know that I have to grow new bone in each of my hips because that is where they took out some of my bone to make the new fake vertebrae.
The fake vertebrae are part metal, part plastic, and part of my bones.
The bone inserted will help grow new bone over the metal and plastic, but it's a very long process to grow new bone.
At one point after my first surgery, I had to wear a bone growth stimulator for 6 hours every single day.
It sent some sort of electrical impulses through my body which supposedly stimulates new bone growth.
It was a pain in the butt, so that's why I'm curious about hgh and if it would help grow new bone.
If it does, I'd happily take it every day to help make all of these implants even stronger, and maybe they would help take away the pain too.

We have the capability to build the world's first bionic man.
We can make him better than he was before.
Better, stronger, faster.

Someday doctors will be able to do stuff like in The Six Million Dollar Man, they will be able to make not like super bionic people, but do spine fusions with better materials, stuff that won't break down over time, stuff that will help us heal faster, stuff that will help take away the pains that we suffer.
Maybe they will use car parts, like maybe from super fast sports cars like some Ferrari parts thrown in so that our bodies won't be so stiff and sore, but better able to move, be better able to get around without stiffness and soreness all of the time.

I know that once we do get that kind of technology, it will be far too late for me, but it would be really cool for other people.
I have hope that someday when doctors perform major life altering surgeries like spine fusions, that they will have the technology to make it better than it is now.
Help people heal better and faster, help people move better, live better lives, have a far better quality of life.

I have days where I feel ok and other days where I just want it all to be over with.
It really sucks that doing something fun and as small as sitting in a theater seat for 2 hours, can cause so much pain and stiffness the next day and for a few days after.
Someday they will find a way to make it all so much better.
I just know they will.

Those are the expected temps for the Tampa Bay area this week.
It's 44 degrees outside right now and the temp is going to drop down to the low 30s like you see in the 7-day forecast to the left there.

My body is absolutely hating these super-cold-for-Florida temps let me tell ya.
My titanium-fused spine is so freaking cold, OMG, and it has not warmed up at all.




This is Florida for crying out loud!
It is NOT supposed to be this damn cold outside!
It feels like it's cold enough to snow and take a ski vacation.

I mean, it's almost as cold here as it is in Maine where my parents and family live!
It is currently 23 degrees in Maine and here we are in Florida, the "Sunshine State", and we will be in the low 30s over night.
Tomorrow, on Sunday, Florida and Maine will be having close to the exact same temps.
It will be 34 degrees here, and it will be 30-37 in Maine.
Isn't that just nuts?!
It will be as cold here as it is there, that's just wrong on so so many levels.

I absolutely hate being sick, it sucks for everyone of course, but ever since having spine fusion surgeries, getting sick is absolutely freaking miserable.
I'm pretty sure that Sebastian has the flu, or something resembling the flu.
He's had a high fever since late Friday night, he's been exhausted, achy from head to toe, no appetite at all, and just plain miserable feeling and miserable to be around.
I started to feel like crap on Saturday afternoon, I blew it off at first, blamed it on my back, but by nighttime, I felt like he did and I had a fever to boot.
My fever seems to have gone, so maybe I don't have what he has, (because he still has a fever as of bedtime) but for the entire day on Sunday, I was downright horrible.
I had a massive migraine, my entire body hurt, I was coughing a little bit, my nose was a bit stuffed up, and I didn't want to eat anything at all, not even look at food.
Mark went and bought him and Sebastian some subs from Publix for dinner, Sebastian only ate half of a half of it before puking that up, and just smelling their subs made me puke.
3 times.
I felt so freaking horrible, felt like I was going to die at any minute, that once I started feeling like I could sit up, I went to one of those get free instant life insurance quotes here websites.
I still have not bought any life insurance.
I talk about getting it all of the time, I've even made quite a few phone calls to insurance companies about it, but I just have never actually taken the time to buy it.
I know that I need it, I know that it is something that I absolutely have to have for my sons in case something bad happens to me, but buying it just freaks me out.
I don't know, it's like if I actually purchase a life insurance package, it's like I'm going to jinx myself or something.
I don't believe in jinxes and stuff, but a part of my brain says 'if you buy life insurance, you are going to die much quicker than you wanted to/plan to, like tomorrow.'
Seriously, my brain gets all stupid like, I just start thinking completely irrational.
I know that buying it is not going to cause me to die soon, but that's how my brain reacts.
Totally stupid huh?
I know it is, I know it's stupid, but I can't help it.
I know I can't be the only one who thinks totally crazy stuff like this, or am I?

All of that stuff that was going on with me and my family a few months back now, is still on our families stage.
Instead of being front and center like it was, it's now just hanging out somewhere stage left.

Mark and I had a long talk on Thursday afternoon, that's why I haven't been around much during the daytime hours recently, not posting to my blogs during the day, only hopping on and off of Twitter every few hours and stuff.
Mark and I, had a long talk about his upcoming MRI on Monday afternoon.
He's really starting to get worried.
Not about the MRI itself, but the results.
He said that if the results say that it's bad and that he will definitely be needing surgery when he's older, he asked if he can tell the doctor to just do the surgery now, while he's young.
I said that of course he can tell the doctor he wants to do it now, but that doesn't mean that the doctor will, but he has every right to make his own medical decisions now, he's legally an adult.

He said that after watching me go through the spine fusion surgeries in my mid 30's, and watching George have spine fusion in his late 50's, after watching the 2 of us suffer through the surgeries, the recoveries, and watching us still be in pain (even years later in my case, George had his surgery just 9 months ago) that he does not, under any circumstance, want to have his surgery in middle age, when the body takes longer to heal, when the body is actually starting to decline in health, he does not want that kind of life for himself, and he does not want his children to have to go through what he and Sebastian have had to go through.
He said that it wasn't my fault, he doesn't blame me for anything, but it really sucks being a kid and having to deal with all of this stuff for the last 10 years of their lives.
 
He also said that after he has his spine fused, after he's recovered as much as his body will recover, that he wants to go to drug rehab and get off of all of the pain medicines while he's young.
He said that he does not want to be like George and I, having to take pain pills every single day for the rest of his life like we have to.
He said that he believes that the reason we are in so much pain, the reason that our surgeries didn't go so well, the reason that we are still suffering, is because the surgeons waited too long to do it, that if it had been done while we were younger, our lives would be so much different.

I really can't argue with him there.
I have often tried to imagine what my life would be like if the doctors had taken better care of me when I was young and first diagnosed with scoliosis.
I know that back in the early 80's when I was diagnosed, that they were using Harrington rods, and I know that those rods failed after about 10-15 years, but dammit, I would have had 10-15 years of being straight before the rods gave out and needed to be replaced, and when they did, the new titanium rods that I have now, would have been developed and doctors would have begun using them by then.
I would have been ok.
I wouldn't have started suffering from the excruciating backaches and burning pain that has  plagued me every single day since I was 19 years old.

Do you have any idea what it has been like to be in pain every single day for 20 years?
There has not been a single day since I was 19, that I've not had pain.
I honestly don't know what it feels like to not have pain, I can't remember what no pain feels like.
 
Maybe if those damn doctors had done their job and fixed me when I was younger, when I was a teenager, fixed me like another girl in my high school class was,  that I wouldn't have become disabled at the age of 31.
At age 31, I was told by 3 orthopedic surgeons and 2 neurosurgeons, that my body couldn't handle the stress anymore, that if I continued to work, continued to put any kind of physical stress on my body any harder than walking at a slow pace, that I would be in a wheelchair within 5 years, and instead of doing spine fusion surgery, they would have been amputating my left leg at the pelvis due to the extensive and non-repairable nerve and blood vessel damage that was running from my lower back all of the way down into my left leg and all of the way to my toes.

All 5 of those surgeons wrote letters to SSDI and told them that I could never work again, and I made and kept copies of all of the letters that every single one of the 21 surgeons and specialists that I saw beginning in July 1998, all the way up until I met my surgeon in November 2005.
I have all of my own medical records, I had to pay to get copies of some of them, but after going from surgeon to surgeon so many times, I just started making my own medical records to bring with me to meet the new surgeons so that time wouldn't be wasted waiting  for my records to be sent over to another new surgeon time after time.

It took from April 2001 to December 2005, to get approved for SSDI.
They denied me twice even with an attorney, and that's when I asked each of the 21 surgeons who treated me to write a letter to SSDI explaining how bad my condition was, and they all agreed to do it, they all wrote letters and sent them to my attorney, and almost all of them included their original notes from during the time they treated me and then had to send me to another doctor who "might" have been able to help me.
I really think it was those letters that finally got me approved.

I went off there eh?
Sorry, didn't mean to, it's just that period of time in my life was not only physically challenging, but emotionally challenging.
I wanted to give up fighting every single day, but then I'd look at my boys, and just keep on fighting.

Mark is a fighter, he will fight to get whatever needs to be done, done, but done his way, when he says so, not when a doctor says so.
He does not want to be middle-aged and fighting a battle everyday to just walk from the bed to the couch.
He doesn't want to put his kids through this either.
I asked him if he was really planning on having kids and he said that he was, at least 2 he said.
Then he told me that I need to make my body as strong as I can because the "Gram" is always the kids favorite babysitter.
Ha ha
I said I would do my best, but for now, let's just get through doc appointments and hurricane season, we can talk about me being a grandmother later.
Muuuucch later. 

That's making myself pretty, not petrifying myself..LoL
As I said, Sebastian and I have to be at the high school at 8am for orientation and a tour of the new building, and I've had insomnia again, so I decided to do some beauty stuff to make myself look a little better.
I found another box of hair color that I must have bought quite awhile ago, (found it in my bedroom IN my dresser drawer) checked the expiration date, it was still good, so I'm sitting here right now with some hair color in and playing on the internet, Twitter mostly.
By the time it's ready to be rinsed out, (40 minutes) it will be time for me to take the shower that I needed to anyway, so I'll hop in, let some water soak my hair, lather it all up and let it sit for a minute, then rinse it completely out, add the conditioner in and let that stay on for the whole rest of my shower, then rinse it all out.
It will be beautificent looking again!

I'm also going to throw some Veet on my legs so that I can wear my nice dress shorts and not be a hairy beast. (Shh, don't tell anyone, but I haven't shaved my legs in almost 2 weeks!!)
I did the laundry yesterday evening so I will have my nice black dress shirt to wear too.
Heck, I may even throw on some earrings and a necklace, maybe even put my rings back on!
I haven't worn any jewelry (or makeup) at all since the last surgery in September.
The 1st reason was because the earrings I wanted to wear were dangles, and with my head tilted down like it is, they looked silly.
The second reason that I haven't worn any jewelry since then is that I didn't want to draw any attention to myself.
I hated the way that I looked so much, that I didn't want anyone to notice me, then notice that I couldn't move my head and start asking questions.
I didn't want to deal with other people talking about it because I couldn't deal with it at all.
I don't feel like that anymore, thank goodness, it was miserable being in that place that I was in for quite a long time.
I am finally feeling like myself again, I'm still stuck like this, but at least I am not so sad and depressed anymore.
I think the combo of antidepressants and the therapy is really working.
I only go once a week, I found some free transportation as long as I give them a couple of days notice, they get me there at no charge. I think they have some sort of mileage deal worked out with medicare or something, because after every trip, I have to sign a paper on their clipboard. The therapist is the one who gave me the number, so don't anyone worry, it's a safe ride with a total stranger every single time. Ha ha ha

Ok, in 15 minutes, I need to go rinse this hair color out and take a shower so I can go to that 3 hour long orientation on absolutely no sleep, but at least I will look pretty.
I hope the principal is there and sees me, she hates me, when she sees me coming, she quickly turns and practically sprints the other way to not have to talk to me. ha haha
I heard that this is her last year, that she's either retiring or moving to a different school.
Thank goodness for that too, she's a horrible principal who says 1 thing, and totally does another.
She knows the school board's policies on bullying and such, and she says that she enforces it, but she doesn't.
She turns away from things that happen right in front of her.
The teens used to come home every day and tell me about that days main attraction right outside the cafeteria which is directly across the hall from the main and her office, and the attraction was usually a fight, usually involving a weapon of some kind, and she'd ignore it, the teachers would ignore it, and the security team would be too busy stuffing their 300lb faces in the caf to notice it.
I really hope that this year is better in the new building that they said was partly designed for security reasons, so let's hope that it cuts down on the fighting, and if it doesn't, that they at least try to do something about it.
Sebastian won't have his big brother to walk with him and protect him at school for the 1st time in his life, so he's really nervous about it this year, said he's scared, there's so many bullies, he's always seeing kids get in fights.
I really am hoping that this year is better for him, he's my boy, I worry about him.   

Even though we've decided to not do the surgery right now, my surgeon still wants me to have a bunch of tests done.
I need to call and schedule an MRI, I still have the referral paper he gave me last week, good thing I didn't throw it out after deciding to not have the surgery huh?
After he gets the results of the MRI, he may, but will more than likely he said, have me go do a Myelogram.
I hate that test.
Hate it.
That page and every other page that describes the test, makes it seem like a piece of cake, but it's not.
You lie face down on this table, they strap you in so you absolutely cannot move, and they inject a contrast dye directly into your spinal cord.
Then the table rotates, up, down, side to side, and upside down, holding each final position for about a minute and a half while they watch the dye move through your nerves and blood vessels.
It's very unnerving being upside down for a minute and a half, all the blood rushes to your head, and the table is not soft, it's a hard xray table because they are doing xrays or CT scans to see where and how far the dye goes.
Then after the test, you have to lay in a bed with your head slightly elevated for 6 straight hours, you cannot move, you can't lay on your sides, you can't get up and use the bathroom, you have to lay there for 6 straight hours while the hole they made in your spinal cord closes up naturally on it's own.
They can't stitch it up for some reason, all they can do is put a small band-aid on it, but if you get up, even to just use the bathroom, your spinal fluid can drain out and that is apparently really bad.
I have a major issue with this part, well the whole test, but having to lay there in bed for 6 hours and not be able to use the bathroom.
I cannot pee in a female urinal.
I just can't.
There's something about it that my brain simply refuses to let me pee in the damn thing, so by the time they finally let me get out of the bed, the very 1st thing I do is run straight to the bathroom and let the flood gates open. ha ha
And hospital beds in the recovery rooms are awful, they are very hard, so it's painful for me to lay there perfectly flat for 6 hours. It's not like hospital beds are comfy anyway, it's a hospital, not the Riviera hotel.

They do this test to look for nerve damage, and my surgeon thinks that I have some nerve damage somewhere, but he's not really sure where exactly.
The nerves in the skin on my back have not fully regrown from the 1st surgery in 2006, I still cannot feel it when someone touches my back, I can't feel anything on my back at all, and he said that is very rare that after 3+ years, that I still do not have any feeling in my back.
He's also concerned about the random tingling in my hands and feet.
Both right and left hands, and right and left feet, randomly go numb and tingle, that fall asleep feeling, but it just happens whenever, nothing physical is causing it like it does when you fall asleep on your arm the wrong way, it just happens.
He wants to see why this is happening, and where the damaged nerves are.
So, even though I'm not having the surgery, I'm still going to have to go through all of the pre-surgical tests, that really sucks, I hate that damn Myelogram.
I always end up with a wicked bad headache after, probably because of the whole spinal fluid thing, but the headache takes hours and hours to go away.
I hope that he sees what he needs to see in the MRI and we don't have to do the Myelogram, I just really hate it and never wat to have to do that test again.
 

The surgery, not right now anyway.
My surgeon is someone I trust so much, you have no idea how much I trust that man.
He has never lied to me about any of the risks, how I would be after the surgery, any difficulties I would face when I came home, anything.
He always looks me dead in the eye and tells me the honest truth about everything, so when he looked me in the eyes on Wednesday and told me all of the risks, no matter how small, and then asked me to consider not doing and his feelings on why, I knew, I know, that I have to trust him.

Even though he would be operating above me and his surgeon partner below me, and the same entire surgical team that has been in there with my previous surgeries, measuring and adjusting, and doing everything that they can to try and make my head be straight, something is telling him, worrying him, that it would over correct and I would end up facing upward.
I could see it in his eyes, I have had so many talks with this man over the years, I know how to read him, and I know that look in his eyes was genuine worry that it would have over corrected and come out facing up.
I am going to call him tomorrow and tell him to cancel the operating room, for now, and for him to keep looking for a way to fix me with less risks, to keep talking to other surgeons in this field, maybe one of them will know how to do it better some day, maybe one of them will know how to do it without all of the risks.
Medical science is constantly changing, they are always finding new ways of doing things, so maybe they will find a new way to do this in a year or 2, or 5, who knows, I just have to hang in there and wait.
And he said he will always help me, if I end up having too much pain, he will help me, he'll do whatever he can to help me until the day comes that we find a way to fix this without so many risks to my body and life. 
Facing up would be a thousand times worse than facing down, I would not be able to live that way, there's no way, I wouldn't.
Facing down has been a nightmare that I can't wake up from, facing up would push me over the psychological edge and that would be the end of me, I would never mentally recover from that.

So now I can stop searching so hard for the best term life insurance quotes , I have time to find a good plan at reasonable rates that I can afford so that when they do find a way to fix me, if something goes wrong, there will be money to pay for my cremation.

I posted to my other blog what is going on with the surgery, and my friend Shannon asked the following question;
Is there a reason, other than the obvious, choking and looking down always, that the surgery needs to be done?
The choking is a huge reason, I choke on food while I'm eating if it's a meat and not cut up into itty bitty pieces and I don't chew it to death, I choke on it if it decides to come back up and out, but it's a major quality of life issue.

For the last 9 months, I have been looking down.
My line of sight is down, I see things at knee level and below, I am always looking at the ground, the floor, the carpet, and when I go places, the ground, the dirty ground, the dirty floors of stores etc etc.
On the day that Mark graduated, I wanted so much to be able to look into his face, into his eyes, and tell him how very proud of him I was, how much I loved him, and I couldn't.
I couldn't see anything above his chest and I was straining so physically hard to see that much, leaning back as far as I could, using my cane for stability, and I still could not see his face.

When I go grocery shopping, I cannot see anything above the 3rd bottom shelf.
If I need something above that, I have to back up against the other shelf, find it and either tell 1 of the teens who is with me to get it, or find it exactly, and then walk to it and blindly reach for it and hope that I grab the right product.
I cannot lift anything heavier than 5lbs, if I do, I hurt terribly for the next several days.
Straining my neck to try and see things or people, or road signs, whatever, puts incredible stress on my neck and shoulders and lower back, and I am then in pain for the next several days and unable to do even basic things around the house.

The teens can and do help me with everything around here.
They go grocery shopping with me, they do the laundry, dishes, they help clean the house, they help me cook, everything, but there will come a day when they are grown up and gone and they will not be here to help me with all of those things.
My house will slowly become a disaster no matter how much I try to stay on top of it.
Just trying to stay on top of it daily, causes a ton of pain.
Standing to do dishes for just 5 minutes, causes me to be in immense pain for hours.

I called my surgeon and spoke to him about what if I don't do this surgery, will he ever be able to do it without so many risks, and he said that he will always help me, that he will continue to search for a way to fix me so that my quality of life improves, so that the always present risk of choking to death on food will end, and that medical science is always changing and improving, but he has no idea when it will come up with a way to fix me.
It could be a month from now or 10 years from now, there is simply no way to know, but he will always keep looking for a way, and he and his staff will always help me.

The last 9 months have been extremely depressing, always looking at the ground, not being able to see my son's faces or anyone else either unless we are all sitting down.
People think that I am being rude when they are talking to me and I don't make eye contact, and then I have to explain to them that I cannot raise my head, and then the questions start and I have to explain everything.
Then the pity comes.
The I'm so sorrys, the oh you poor thing, the it will get better, the keep your faith, the god loves you and is giving you what he thinks you can handle bullshit, and the never ending I'm praying for you fucking shit.
If 1 more person tells me that they are praying for me, I might fucking explode.
People have been praying for me and my back issues to be fixed for years, and has it ever done any good at all?
Has it!?!
Tell me!!!!
What has any of that never ending fucking prayer accomplished?!?!
Not a fucking thing that's what!!!
All of those prayers have never gotten anything done, it's all been wasted time and breath, so just fucking stop it, just stop it.
And I really don't want to hear that people pray and god does it in his time, on his time, when he feels it's time.
There is no god, that is evident but all of the world's ills around us and the years upon years of endless unanswered prayers, so just stop, it's a waste of time and it does nothing but piss me off.

The thought of being like this possibly for the rest of my life is overwhelming, it is too much to think about at times.
The last 9 months have been so hard, and I have been sinking further and further into depression.
I know that I need to talk to my doctor about it on Wednesday when I see him, I need to tell him what my surgeon said, let him know that I am still deciding what I should do, but I need to tell him that my depression over this is getting much worse.
Yesterday, I was an absolute wreck, I cried off and on all day long thinking about being like this for possibly for the rest of my life if they never find a way to fix it without so many risks.
Thinking about what my life is going to be like when the teens grow up and leave, how alone I will be, how hard everything will be.
I was so hopeful that eventually I would have a somewhat normal life again, be able to see people's faces, be able to go out again, sit in a movie theater and watch a movie, go out to eat in restaurants, do normal things again, but all of those normal every day things that people take for granted are slipping away from me again.
I am a prisoner in my home, a prisoner of my own body.

Friends and family, my own sons, keep telling me that I could find a nice man some day who would understand, who would be able to deal with all of this, and fall in love with me.
But I don't think so.
Once that man learns the real truth about it all, he wouldn't be able to deal with it, and he would leave.
I am in pain 24 hours a day 7 days a week, I take a crapload of pain medications that I am physically addicted to.
I am physically unable to do a lot of things, normal every day type things, never mind do relationship type things, sexual relationship type things.
Doing any type of physical activity leaves me in pain and can take hours or days to recover from depending on what that activity is.
Just going to Mark's graduation left me in agonizing pain for the next 3 days, and we didn't even stay for the entire event.
Going grocery shopping for just 1 hour takes me 3 hours to recover from.
You see what I'm getting at here?
Having a normal, loving, sexual relationship with someone is going to be something that causes physical pain and then long recovery periods.
My future is not looking very bright at all.
It's looking very lonesome, very painful, and very depressing, even more depressing than it already is, and so I need to discuss this stuff with my doctor, I know that I have to.
I hate the thought of having to take a medication for depression, but it's getting worse, I am having thoughts of just quitting when the teens grow up and leave.
No, I'm not actually planning anything, but the thoughts are there, the thoughts of they will be grown up and on their own, they will be ok, and I can go, I can end my suffering.
I am not as strong as everyone keeps saying, and that is something else that I am sick and tired of people saying to me, that I'm such a strong person.
No I'm not.
There's a huge difference between being strong and just going through the motions because you have no other fucking choice in the matter.
I have had no other choice in the matter for the last 10+ years.
I am a single mother of 2 teenagers and I have a really bad back.
I have had to get up and keep going because there has been no other option for me, not because I'm strong.
I stopped being Superwoman many, many years ago.

I'm tired, so very, very, very tired.
I'm physically and emotionally drained, I honestly do not know how much more of this life I can take.

I'm so sick and tired of complaining.
I'm like a broken record and I'm sick of listening to myself complain, I can only imagine how other people feel about it.
I am so sick of being in pain, sick of being sick, sick of having to take pain pills to deal with the pain, sick of running out of pain pills because of the crappy rainy weather and having to double up just to be able to move, and then having to wait 3-4 days for my refills to be ready, being out of pain meds makes my body go through withdrawals which is absolutely horrible to deal with, you have no idea what a nightmare that is.

It has rained almost every single day for the last 7 days.
Every day for almost 2-3 hours per day.
The humidity goes up, the rain comes down, and the titanium rods get frozen solid, they get stiff and do not allow me to move.
I lay on the couch underneath my blanket trying to warm them up with my heating pad, I try to move, I try to get up and do all of the things that I need to do as a mother.
Cook dinner for my sons, do their laundry, go grocery shopping, but I can't, I can't do any of it.**
I can barely walk to the freaking bathroom without crying, never mind stand and cook dinner.
I hate the rainy season, I hate it so so much.
It hurts me, it makes me hurt, it makes my body stiff as a board, an unbreakable board, and there is absolutely nothing that I can do about it.

I hate all of the pain pills, I hate it all.
I hate what I have to take, I hate how much I have to take, and I hate that after this next surgery, there will be even more of it to take, probably even higher doses, maybe even stronger ones, and that really, really bothers me.
I lay in my bed at night and cry about it sometimes, actually, a lot.

I hate what all of these pain medicines have done to my body and my mind.
I hate how my body requires them, needs them, and that at exactly after 6 hours, if I don't take another 1, my body starts screaming at me to take it.
My back starts to spasm, my stomach starts cramping up to let me know that it needs it or else there will be hell to pay in the form of diarrhea or vomit.
I go through withdrawals almost immediately if I do not take my pain medicines every 6 hours as I have been doing for the last 10+ years.
My body is so used to having them every 6 hours that my mind is trained to know exactly when I should have them.
I am fully addicted to my pain medicines.
I am totally ashamed to admit this, but I am at a loss of what to do right now because I'm having another fucking surgery.
When I 1st started seeing my pain manager after my 1st spine fusion surgery, I told him that I wanted to get off all of the pain pills, and that is what we were working on.
We had successfully gotten me off of almost all of them when we got the news that my neck vertebrae were basically killing me, and I had to have emergency surgery in 30 days or I was going to die in August 2008, and then I had the surgery on September 9th 2008.

But I was taking 320, 10/325mg Hydrocodone (pain) per month, and we got down to taking just 40 of those.
I had been taking 180, 30mg Oxycontin (pain) per month, and we got down to taking just 30 of those.
I had been taking 180, 250mg Soma (muscle relaxer) per month, and we got down to taking just 30 of those.

I had the 1st spine fusion in February 2006, and spent the 1st year doing physical therapy and adjusting to life, and then that whole 2nd year and right up until I got the news about my neck, I spent it trying to get off all of the drugs.
I was working on it, I was slowly weaning off the drugs, it was working and it was going so well.
I wasn't having any painful withdrawal symptoms because my body was still getting the drugs it wanted, it was just getting them much more spaced out, many, many hours spaced out, we were doing it the right way, and we were so close to finally being off all of them, I was almost free of the drugs.

And then I had the cervical spine fusion surgery, and they put me back on:
320, 10/325mg Hydrocodone, 180, 40mg Oxycontin, and only 30 of the 250mg Soma per month.
I don't like the Somas, they knock me out for hours and hours, and when I wake up, I'm completely confused.
I don't know what day it is, where I am, where my kids are, anything, completely and utterly confused.
They don't have the nickname "soma coma" for nothing.

On June 29th, I'm having another cervical spine fusion surgery, this one will go all the way up to my occiptal bone in my skull, a metal plate will be attached to my skull permanently, I'll have new rods and screws, I'll be in a halo brace for anywhere from 3-6 months, there's a possibility that my throat swells shut during surgery and I'll need a trach tube in order to be able to breathe, a possibility that I won't be able to eat and swallow food so I may need a feeding tube.
There is no telling what kind of drugs they are going to put me on for the amount of pain that I will be in.
I'm going to have 4 screws in my skull for 3-6 months and a contraption on my head and shoulders for that long, it's going to be annoying and painful, I'm sure the drugs will be strong and flowing, and my body will love them.
And then it will be hell to get off of them.

My body is addicted to the pain medicine that I take and I am ashamed of that.
I am also very afraid of it, I am afraid of what they are going to give me next and for how long, and afraid of what it's going to be like to get off of it all when the time comes.
Withdrawals are very, very painful, your whole body hurts and aches, your skin crawls and itches, spasms, you hallucinate, every single inch of your body and mind is in absolute hell while coming off of the drugs and I admit to being terrified of what is going to happen and it's not even time for it yet, but it's because I know that with this next surgery the drugs they are going to give me are going to be even stronger than what I am taking right now and because I know how bad my body craves what I take right now.

I hate this.
I hate it all.

Over the last 10 months now, I've been losing weight through a variety a ways.
One way has been because I was afraid to eat during the day when the teens weren't home because if I got sick, I was choking on my own vomit and almost dying, so I lost weight by not eating.
Another way has been because of the medicines I take, they just decrease my appetite, and some of them make food and drink taste absolutely terrible, so I don't even bother trying to eat when everything tastes like crap.
And since February, I've been cooking with the NuWave Oven Pro which drains off excess fats and oils, and I've lost 15 lbs.
After this next and hopefully last spine fusion surgery, I really want to get serious about my weight and lose even more weight to get down to my ideal weight which is about 140-145, so I've been reading a lot of diet pill reviews, and one that I've been reading has a lot of potential.
I read some Decaslim reviews, and it sounds very promising to help me get to my goal weight.
I look really good at 140-145, not too thin, no bones showing, but not fatty either, my face looks really good at that weight, my frame looks good, I can fit into nice clothes at that weight, and I feel good at that weight.
So, after this next and hopefully last surgery, I am going to get super serious about my weight and take off as much as I can through diet and exercise, and if I need any help, I will check out any supplement help that my doctors recommend and give it a go to get down to 140-145 and finally be at my ideal weight again.
I'm not getting any younger, I've got to get down to a good weight and stay there. 

I have not been doing so well over the last few days weeks because of all of the stuff going on in my life right now.
Mark is graduating high school on May 30th from 9am-1pm at the local arena.
Over 950 students are graduating, that's why it's going to be 4 hours long.
4 hours in what I am sure is a very uncomfortable chair, I have no idea how I'm going to physically deal with that, but I AM going to deal with it because my baby boy, my 1st baby is graduating from high school.
I postponed my surgery so that I could be there to see him graduate, so I will get through 4 very long uncomfortable hours no matter what.

Then Monday, June 1st, is Sebastian's birthday and the start of hurricane season.
Sebastian has been feeling like everyone forgot his birthday because of all of the talk about Mark's graduation.
NO ONE has forgotten his birthday at all, it's on Monday, Mark's graduation is on the Saturday before it.
Trust me, I know when his birthday is, I recall that day crystal clear.
But he's worried that people will forget his birthday, that he won't get any birthday cards in the mail from all of his relatives like his grandparents, his aunts, etc.
He just thinks that everyone will forget because Mark's graduation is such a big deal.
I keep trying to tell him that no one has forgotten, that he will get his birthday cards filled with handwritten words of birthday wishes and love from everyone, to stop worrying.
Yes, we are all excited about Mark graduating, but we have not forgotten his birthday.

And I'm just really stressing about the upcoming surgery big time.
I always get like this for weeks before the surgery, and then I'm ok about a week before it actually happens.
Like, I suddenly snap back and suddenly able to deal with it all, I get mentally prepared for it, I become positive and ready, but until that morning when I wake up ready to just do it, I'm an absolute wreck.
That's how I am right now.
I am a total freaking wreck.
I know that I will be ok, but for now I'm just one giant ball of stress and worry about everything.
And I have so much to do.
I need to make sure that all of my papers are in order again, my DNR, my sound mind and health statements about where and who I want the teens to live with in the event that something goes wrong.
And I know that those papers don't constitute actual custody papers, but a judge would take them into consideration when determining custody if something should go terribly wrong and I don't make it back.
I do not want my ex-husband, their father, to have them, and they do not want to go with him anyway.
They are old enough to tell a judge where and who they want to live with, and that is who is written in my papers.
There are 3 people/families, written in order of who we want them to live with 1st, and if that family can't do it, the next, and so on.
The teens have made it very clear that if something does happen and I die, that if a judge orders them to live with their father, they will run away and not go back no matter what.
And then Mark will file for emancipation, and then file for custody of Sebastian.
They absolutely refuse to live with their father.

All of this stuff and more is on my mind and stressing me out, it all has to be dealt with, and I will deal with it, I just am struggling right now, I need to get to that mental point where it just clicks and I'm ok.
But I am not there right now, I am nowhere close to that right now.
I am a mess 24/7, I cry at the drop of a hat, I can barely sleep, I can barely eat.
I need to get to the good place but it's just not happened yet.

I have had a really bad couple of days here, still hurting pretty bad too.
It's been raining off and on since Thursday, so my joints, my bones, and the titanium, have just been in pure agony.
In yesterday's mail, I got a letter from Cindy, my surgeon's nurse, and in it were all of the surgery dates.
My surgery pre-op testing will be on June 10th at 9:30am, and my surgery will be on June 29th, and I have to be at the hospital at 6:30am.
It's all scheduled, so it's on whether I'm mentally ready for it or not.

The bathroom undermount sink has been driving me crazy!
It's been leaking, and clogging up all weekend, I have got to get that fixed soon.
It started clogging up last night, and when I went to plunge it, I felt some water hitting my feet.
I know that I didn't splash any out of the sink, so I opened the doors and saw that there's a link in the pipes.
Great, just great.
What was a simple project to replace just the faucet, is now going to have to be handled by the landlord, and the whole thing is going to have to be fixed.

Cross posted from my other blog because it relates to my surgery and personal feelings.

Mark and I went shopping this afternoon because Sebastian wasn't feeling well, and I've noticed something about who goes shopping with me and how much I spend.
If Sebastian goes, I stay on target, to my list, and don't overspend.
If Mark goes with me, I end up buying things not on my list, and spend more than I had planned too.
So guess how I did today?
If you guessed that I spent more, you'd be correct.

My total bill before coupons was $231.94
Total is coupons and in store special savings - $49.15
Total after coupons and savings applied = $182.79

I try to use as many coupons as I can, and take advantage of as many in store special savings as I can, because I only get $349.00 per month in food stamps, and with 2 growing young men in the house, that food money goes very quickly.
I try to avoid buying junk food items when I can, and I try to cook as many meals as I can without buying easy microwave foods because they cost more.
Sometimes. Publix always has a lot of easy foods on sale for super cheap, and I usually always have coupons to match those items, so sometimes I do end up buying easy foods. But anyway, whenever Mark goes with me he distracts me, he stands in front of me while I'm trying to look at and compare the costs of items on the shelves.
He's always talking to me about something totally unrelated to shopping while I'm trying to shop.
I ended up buying about 15 items not on my list today.
Ugh.
But, they were on sale, so I can't complain too much about it. It would have been nicer had I had matching coupons for those items, but oh well.
What did I buy that wasn't on my list? Chips, dip, beef jerky, some Oreo cookie things, Fun Stix I think they are called, more soda, another pound of lunch meat, some bread from the bakery, canned soup, about 5-6cans, and some canned spaghettios.

Speaking of spaghettios, next month begins the hurricane supply shopping.
I need to stock up on the canned foods that can be eaten without heating them up, and stuff like that.
I'm actually worried about hurricane season this year, not because they have predicted any yet, but because I'm having another spine fusion in June, and with the kind of luck that I have, this year will be the year that we get hit with a hurricane here in Sarasota, and I'll be in a bad state recovering from surgery, in the halo brace, possibly the trach tube, and we'll get smacked with a big one.
Sarasota is weird, in the 12 years we've lived here, this area hasn't been hit with a single hurricane, it's like we live in the outer banks twilight zone of storm free zones.
The most we've ever gotten here is a small bit of wind and rain, just enough wind to blow some trash cans around, maybe take out a really old tree, but nothing major.
But like I said, because of the kind of luck that I have, this will be the year that Sarasota gets nailed, and I'll be completely useless to deal with it, I'll have to rely on other people to help us pack up stuff and evacuate.
So far, the tropics look good, there's nothing at all out there, so let's hope it stays that way all through hurricane season which is June 1st to November 30th.

Today was a very rough day, it actually started last night and yesterday afternoon as rains moved into the area.
The titanium rods get so cold, just so so cold, it's painful and agonizing, and I just hurt over every inch of my body.
Today was so painful, I laid in bed most of the day trying to sleep, but the pain was just too much, and so instead of sleeping, I spent the day crying.

I hate this ya know, I hate this life that I live.
Every day is a struggle to move and do things, take care of my home and family, try to do what I'm supposed to, try to do it all through the pain, and some days it's just too much.

I have to have another surgery, and the thought of going through it again, dealing with more pain and more recovery time, just makes me very angry and depressed.
I hate the pain, I hate constant and never ending pain, the constant pain medications, I hate it all, every single bit of it.
There are days, much like today, that I simply don't even want to go on anymore, I want it to all just stop, I want it all to be over with.
I'm so fucking sick of being in pain, being on pain meds, being stuck in these awful and painful positions.
I'm so fucking tired, just so so fucking tired of it all.

Sometimes I think I just need a really long vacation to somewhere secluded, to be all alone and not have to deal with anything or anyone.
I've even thought of being trapped on a cruise ship, locking myself in my room, only venturing out to eat, maybe taking walks on the decks late at night when other people are dancing away in the nightclubs or sleeping soundly.
I just want some major alone time, and I don't think I'm going to get any very soon.
Why?
I fade in and out of depression a lot, especially in these last few months.
I rarely sleep anymore, often lying awake all night long in my room just waiting for the alarm to go off, or laying on the couch watching mindless tv all night just to pass the time.
I need the surgery, I can't stay living like this, but I also don't want to go through another surgery again, I don't want to put my family through another one again.
It's hard, so so hard on all of us.
I don't have a date yet, but now that I know when Mark's graduation is, I want to wait until after that to have the next surgery, I don't want to miss it by being in the hospital, and I also don't want to miss it because I just got home from the hospital, and I also don't want to show up at his graduation in that terrible halo brace.
I think I'm going to call my surgeon on Monday morning and request that we do it in June.
That way I won't miss his graduation or have to go to it that brace, plus, both teens will be out of school for the year, they won't miss any school, they won't be in school worried about me either.
I think that's the best plan for all of us who have to deal with this.
But it also means another month or so like this, with my head stuck down, with not being able to eat unless other people are home because of the risks of choking, and being in so much pain.
But it really is the best plan I think, even if it means having to wait a bit longer.

I went to my surgeon appointment this afternoon, I didn't see my surgeon, he was in surgery, so I saw one of the other surgical team members.
She went over my CT Scan results, text and the films, and we talked about everything, what the plan is, what they will do, what they can do, and what may happen.

The plan is to completely remove the vertebrae at C7, you can see where that is on this chart, and then after removing that vertebrae, they would pull C6 down to meet up with T1, or pull T1 up to meet up with C6, whatever.
In order to do this, all of the rods that are currently installed from C1 to T3, would need to be taken out, they would leave all of the screws in place because they will need those later to attach new rods again.
By removing that vertebrae, it would straighten my neck and head out.
My head isn't totally collapsed down on it's own, it's actually the fault of C7, that my head is facing down.
Right at C7, my spine starts curving forward, and so my head looks tilted down, but it's actually my whole neck they said.
Yes, C1 and C2, are congenitally fused from birth, there is no disc between them at all, and they did bend forward a bit, but it is C7 that is causing the forward bending and downward tilt.

Once they remove C7, pull up T1 to meet up with C6, they will decide if they need to fuse me all of the way up to the base of my skull, the occipital bone,  which would prevent any movement at all, forever.
I would never turn my head left or right, or up and down, ever again.
That is something I have come to terms with, and I am ok with it because right now, looking down all of the time, is very depressing, and it actually causes dizzy spells, I lose my balance a lot too.
It is not a definite that they will have to do that, so until it actually happens, I am not going to worry about it.

Because of the new CT films, they have a much better look at what's going on, they know better now what they are facing, and what will more than likely happen.
Because of the new films and what they can see, the risk percentages have come way, way down, and the trach tube, which I have been in an almost panic over, dwelling on it constantly, if they have to do it at all, it would NOT be in for 3-4 months at all.
It would only be in for about 2 weeks total, and it would only be put in if during surgery, my neck muscles started tightening up on the breathing tube (intubation tube used during surgery to keep you breathing)  causing the tube to get squished which would prevent me from breathing, so a trach would have to be put in below my vocal cords so I would be able to talk by covering the hole on the trach tube.
But again, it would only be in for about 2 weeks, just long enough for my neck muscles to heal up and then they would remove it, stitch me all back up, and I'd be all good to go breathing through mouth and nose again.

As for the feeding tube, it also depends on what happens with the intubation tube during surgery, so that's another wait and see, but if it does happen, and depending on what they had to do, either a feeding tube would be placed down through my nose for a short period of time.
If it ends up being needed for a longer period of time, they would do a stomach feeding tube.

We don't have a specific date yet, we are looking at a couple of dates, but my surgeon will decide on the final date.
So far, the possible dates are April 10th, or April 24th, or wait until sometime in May.
He may want to wait until May, give me just a little bit more time to heal up a bit more, but they said that so far, my bones are fusing really, really good.
That's probably due to the insane amount of calcium I take every single day.
Normal people take 1 calcium tablet per day, I take a Calcium/Magnesium/Zinc tablet 4 times per day to help with new bone growth and fusion.
I don't recommend this amount, nor even half of it, unless you enjoy being really gassy.
Ha ha
Seriously though, all of that calcium has a gassy side effect, so you're either constantly burping, or constantly farting.

I will definitely be in a halo brace for 3-4 months, and they have told me this will probably be the most frustrating part of my recovery.
It is screwed into your skull, 2 in front, 2 in back, and as you can see from those images, a big contraption attached to me 24/7 for the entire length of time he decides I need to wear it.
Sleeping, eating, everything, will be extremely difficult, and feel like living in a prison, so a lot of patients get very depressed within a few weeks of living with it, but they have medications that can help with the anxiety and panic attacks that come from feeling all closed in and trapped.
It's screwed into your skull, attached to your shoulders and chest, there's zero chance for any type of movement at all, so it becomes a lot for people to mentally handle.
I really don't know how well I'll deal with it.
I hated wearing the turtle shell brace on my body after my first A/P spine fusion in 2006, and I hated the neck brace from this past surgery in September 2008, so this big thing attached to my skull with no way of ever taking it off myself to give myself a break from it for even an hour, may drive me slightly insane.
I just won't know until it's on me and I'm at home away from the morphine drip machines that numb out any feelings and thoughts, having to take oral medications, or however they will have to do it if I end up with a feeding tube.

Tomorrow, I have to call my heart doctor, get an appointment to have him clear me for surgery, so another cardiac stress test, and then my primary care physician to have her clear me as well.
I'm setting these appointments up ASAP so that my primary care doc can't try to cancel my surgery at the last minute like she did in September.
 
So anyway, that's where I'm at, we have a plan but no definite date yet.
I have stuff to take care of to get the surgery ball rolling, and take care of everything around my home, for my sons, all of the same stuff I always do for every surgery.

Below is an interesting CT Scan image.
This is me, it was taken on 3-19-2009, and it's a front view of me from the chest all the way up to the top of my skull.
I know it looks like it's from behind because the rods and screws appear to be in the front, but it's not, it is a face front view, but the rods and screws stand out like crazy.
This shows you just how high up the fusion goes.
C1 is basically at nose level, and all of that metal goes all of the way down to my tailbone.
Kinda freaky looking eh?
Click it for biggie size to really see how freaky it is.

After years of my body being crooked, like the majority of my life, I adjusted to how I saw things.
When your spine sets your head slightly off center, your vision adjust to that position.
Then I had the first surgery in 2006, my line of sight corrected itself, my head was now placed in the center of my body, so it took about 6 months or so before my vision adjusted to the correct line of sight.

I had the second surgery in September, my head dropped down, so now my line of sight is off again, and at times it's ok, I have adjusted for the most part, but if I do a lot of walking, standing, bending, my line of sight goes off center, and I end up dizzy, my vision is off, and there have been a few times I've actually gotten nauseous from not being "right".

I'm having one of those times right now.
I didn't think I overdid it today, but apparently I did, because I am dizzy, my vision is way off, it's tilted to the left, so my line of sight is off to the left and sort of spinning, and I'm having trouble correcting it.
If I close my eyes, it actually gets worse, look down, I get dizzy and nauseous, look right, my visions starts spinning wildly, I can't get it to adjust tonight.
 

This may be long, sorry.

I went to my pain doc appointment this morning, and let me tell you, it was just a messy day.
My pain doc does sports pain, rehab kind of stuff, general pain management, helps people wean off of pain drugs.
That was my original intent when I started seeing him in 2007, to get off of the drugs.
I had my 1st surgery, expected it to be my only surgery, so our goal was to start weaning me off of them, and we were.
I had gone from taking over 300 Hydrocodone 10/325's per month, down to just 60, and we were well on our way to being off of them completely.
Since then, I've had another surgery, (September '08) and will be having another.
The pain medications I am on are very strong, I am not going to lie to anyone about what I take.
I take Hydrocodone 10/325 8 times per day.
I take Oxycontin 30mg 6 times per day.
That was until today.
See, the pharmaceutical companies that make the Oxycontin 30's, there were 3 of them, 2 of them were told to stop making them for some reason, so that leaves 1 manufacturer to create enough supply for the entire country.
They cannot keep up with the demand.
So the Oxycontin 30's are out of the question, they cannot be gotten by any of the local pharmacies, so my pain doc prescribed me a new dose, 40mg Oxycontin, timed release, for 4 times per day.
When I went to the pharmacy to get them and the Hydrocodone 10/325's quantity 180 per month,  I was told my insurance does not cover them, they cost $295.00 out of pocket, I simply don't have the money, so I only picked up the Hydrocodone 10/325s.

Also, my pain doc does sports injuries, rehab, he works mainly on smaller injuries and helping people get better so they can stop taking medication.
Because of my surgical history, because I'll be having another surgery, he decided that he cannot continue seeing me, and he referred me to another pain doc who works with people like me, surgical patients with a history and a future history of needing more pain management than he is capable of providing.
I came home and called the new doc, made an appointment, I see him on Monday the 23rd at 3:15pm, and hopefully he can help me.

There's another reason my pain doc has decided to transfer me to another doctor.
Last month here in Sarasota, a 17 year old boy broke into a house and stole the pain medication of a man dying of cancer.
He stole several bottles of heavy duty narcotics including Oxycontn 30's.
He went home and overdosed on the pills he stole.
Please remember that part, he broke into a home, stole the medication, and overdosed on it.

His parents found his body and the pill bottles.
In their grief and anger, they decided that somebody must pay for this, so they have hired a lawyer who must have found some loophole, and they are suing the doctor who prescribed the medication.

Did you get that?!
The parents are suing a doctor who prescribed medication to his patient, the patient had his home broken into by the 17 year old, the 17 year old overdosed, and so the parents are suing the doctor for negligent homicide.

I don't understand how the parents, even the lawyer, can think this is the right thing to do.
The doctor didn't prescribe them to the 17 year old and then the kid died, the doctor prescribed them to his pateint who was dying of cancer, the 17 year old BROKE IN, STOLE the medicine, and died, and so how is it even remotely negligent homicide on the doctor's part?!?!
I don't understand why the judge hasn't throw out this lawsuit either, it's not right.
How is the doctor even remotely responsible for this kid dying?
The kid broke into a home, stole the medicine, took a lot of it and died.
It's not the doctor's fault at all, it's the kid's fault.
He was a dumb ass kid who stole medicine and took too much and died.
How the parents can blame the doctor is beyond me.
They need to bury their son and shut the fuck up in my opinion.
Their son was a thief and a drug addict, the doctor had nothing at all to do with what their kid did, and for them to sue the doc is just stupid.
Their kid was stupid and so are the parents.

But thanks to them, doctors are scared to prescribe the medication, they are afraid that if someone breaks in and steals it, that they will get sued as well.
So I'm being sent to a new pain doc with more legal stuff than he has, more doctor/patient contracts than he has, he may even use medicine safes that can only be opened on a timer by the patient, and if opened at the wrong time, and alarm sounds at his (the doctors) office, and the doctor calls the patient to check on why they are opening it at the wrong time.
I don't know for sure, but that may be what I am in for at this new doctor.
In the mean time, I only have one of my medications because my insurance doesn't cover the other one, I can't afford to pick it up, my tax refund still isn't in, so I may end up having to wait until I get that money to pick it up, or wait until the 23rd when I see this new doctor, and he will have to prescribe me something that my insurance does cover.
I haven't been feeling all that well between the fall and just generally sick, so my pay that I just got a few minutes ago by paypal, isn't even close to being enough to pick it up either.
Nothing I can do but wait it out, hope the one med will be enough to get me through until I either get the money or get a new script.

I was so busy being stressed out about things, that I forgot to update how it went at the pain docs yesterday Friday. (lost track of time too, obviously)

First, his dog, Holly, is ok.
One of her back legs is badly broken, she had to have an operation, has pins and screws in her leg, a couple of broken ribs, and something else, but she's fine.

The nurse took me in the room, asked me to tell her what was up, so I told her everything that happened during surgery and after, and she wrote it all down, told me the doc would be in in a few minutes.
The doc came in, started reading, and then asked me again what happened, so i explained it all to him.
I told him that I had to have another surgery, and showed him that my head doesn't move, about the possible surgery options that my surgeon has, and everything else.

We talked about it all for a bit, he said that if I do end up with a trach tube, that we will work out a way for me to be in contact with his office without having to speak cuz I won't be able to.
He said he'd probably give me his cell number or one of the nurse's cell numbers, and that way I could just text them when I need to make appointments, or if I'm having any severe pain or other troubles.
He wrote out the scripts for the meds I take and actually gave me more than my surgeon was giving me, so that we don't run into any more running out issues.
My surgeon was only giving me my meds by the week, that's all he's allowed to do by law, but the pain doc can do them monthly and even 3 months at a time if need be, but he's got me scheduled to come back in 1 month several days before I am due to run out.

So yeah, all better now, things with my doc are going to work out, he's going to help me as much as he can, he'll help me with the trach tube and not being able to speak, the feeding tube if I need help with it because my surgeon is far away, and my pain doc is local and could get to my house in like 5 minutes if anything bad should happen.

Things are going to be ok.

I went for my daily walk just a bit ago, all the way up to the corner store and back, I needed to get a loaf of bread anyway, and I was craving chocolate, so I grabbed a snickers too.
Yum.

When I got back, I checked the mail box, which amazingly, has not been hit by a car again in a good long while, (knock on wood) and in today's mail, I got our new Netflix movies, Hancock and Repo! The Genetic Opera.
The teens want to see Hancock, and I want to see Repo!
It looks sorta interesting and it's got good reviews on Netflix.
I also got my dvd that I ordered with my Buy.com gift certificate from a shopping mix-up, the Poltergeist (25th Anniversary Edition).
I have always loved that movie, it's been digitally remastered, and it's just a classic, plus, I had to spend the rest of the gc, it was only $6.00, so I said why not.

Then I saw it.
A jury duty summons.
I can't serve jury duty.
A) I can't get all the way to Venice every day, no car, no driver's license, and B) medically, I'm just in no shape to do it.
I take heavy duty pain meds 24/7, I have doctor's appointments up the wazoo all of the time, and I cannot sit in the same spot for hours on end every day.
I am constantly having to get up, walk around, lay down etc, so yeah, I cannot serve jury duty.
I'm all about doing my civic duty and all of that, but I can't do jury duty, not right now, it's physically impossible for me to get there and sit there all of the hours that would be needed.

I went for my first walk this morning without my neck brace.
It was really difficult because I can't lift my head up, but interesting because when I was wearing the neck brace, it was like wearing a huge flashing piece of digital signage that told car drivers to give me some walking room, slow down, don't expect me to jump in the ditch to avoid being hit by a car.

We don't have sidewalks on my street, so yeah, it can be dangerous going for a walk, and this morning I regretted not wearing the neck brace and came back as quickly as possible.
Drivers did not give me any walking room, I could barely see where i was going, barely see oncoming traffic, so trying to get out of the way of jerky drivers was kind of scary.

I came back as quick as I could get here, and have decided that even though my surgeon told me I could stop wearing the neck brace all of the time, that when i go for walks, I'll wear it.
It kept drivers from trying to run me down.

I was asked to try out a new hair removal product, and because of all my spine issues, not being able to bend, I said sure, why not!
I have such a difficult time shaving my legs due to my spine fusion surgeries, so I'm always on the lookout for new, easy to use, and good working hair removal products.

When the package showed up last week and I opened it, I had to laugh, it was a product that my teens and I laugh uncontrollably over every time we see the commercial for it.

In the big padded envelope was the product Smooth Away Hair Removal  with 2 Applicators + 24 Pads + Hair Inhibitor Moisturizer to use after your remove the hair.

Why do the teens and I laugh every time we see the commercial?
Because it's high grade sandpaper.
The Smooth Away pads are "covered with superfine crystals that buff away unwanted hair leaving your skin so soft and incredibly smooth."

Years ago, like when I was about 17, maybe 18, there was another product exactly like this put out by Sally Hansen, and I bought it to try it out.
I hated shaving because I was always nicking myself, I hadn't mastered the technique yet, and I lived in Maine where if you took a shower longer than 5 minutes in the winter, you would run out of hot water, and as most women know, cold water closes your pores, which pretty much makes sure that trying to shave your legs would be difficult.
The pores would be closed, my legs would be covered in goosebumps from the icy cold water, and so yeah, I'd nick my legs to death.

But when my Dad saw my purchase of the Sally Hansen product, he giggled, and said to me, "If you had told me you were going to buy some sandpaper to get rid of your leg hairs, I could have saved you some money. I have a whole box of sandpaper in the basement in all grades, I'm sure I've got one just like this down there, could have saved you your money."
Then he started laughing again.

But I had agreed to try out the Smooth Away and do a review of it, and so, I have tried it out.
I got it last week, and wanted to try it out for a whole week to be able to do a proper review of both the Smooth Away and the hair growth inhibitor moisturizer that came with it.
The Smooth Away does work, it really does, but it takes a bit of time to do it, much longer than shaving or waxing, much much longer than using Veet, but it does indeed work.

You take the handled buffing pad, and then remove the sticky backing from one of the Smooth Away pads, and stick it to the buffing pad.
Place about 3-4 fingers inside the handle, and start rubbing in a circular motion on the areas that you want to remove the hair from.
You have to rub in small circles several times in 1 area to remove the hair, so it does take a bit of time.
If you want to use this, I would suggest doing it the night before you need to be hair free, and set aside about an hour to do it.
I would suggest taking a shower, do not apply any lotion to your legs or arms, (if you remove your arm hairs) and then dry your legs thoroughly before starting.
The places you want to remove the hair from must be completely dry or it won't work, and it definitely doesn't work if you have any lotion on your skin.

I also tried out the hair growth inhibitor moisturizer lotion after removing the hair, and it's very silky, it leaves your skin feeling very soft and smooth, it has a very pleasant smell, and is a terrific moisturizer.
As for helping to stop new hair growth, it does an ok job as far as I can tell.
You have to apply it every day for several days after removing the hair with the Smooth Away pads, in order for it to get into the hair follicles and work, so after every shower, I applied the hair growth inhibitor moisturizer instead of my usual moisturizer, and I would say it doesn't stop new hair from growing, but it does slow it down.
I would wait about 5-10 minutes after removing the hair before applying the hair growth inhibitor moisturizer or any other lotion, so the skin has a chance to "calm down", or you may end up with a slight redness like I did the first time I tried it out.
My skin was slightly irritated, and so adding the moisturizer right away left it looking a little red.

As for exfoliating your skin, I suppose it works, it is a high grade sandpaper, so it does remove some dead skin from the top layer leaving you feeling a bit smoother after.
As for how long it lasts before you have to do it again, about the same amount of time as shaving, maybe a little less, because it's not lifting and cutting the hairs off, it's simply sloughing them away from the surface only.
You do get stubble when it regrows, but if you use the hair growth inhibitor lotion, they take more time to grow back and slightly less course hairs grow back, but there will still be stubble.

The kit I received comes with 2 handled buffing pad applicators, 1 for large areas like legs, arms, men's backs or chests, and 1 small handled buffing pad applicator 1 for the bikini line or upper lip and chin areas, 24 crystallized buffing pads, 12 large and 12 small,  and 1-4 ounce tube of of the hair growth inhibitor moisturizer, and 1 case to hold the pads and handled pad applicators, and it retails for about $29.99
They also offer smaller kits, with just the 1 large buffing pad and 1 small buffing pad, and only 10 crystallized hair removal pads. 
 




















This product does work, but it's not a good fit for me.
I cannot bend all the way down to reach my lower leg areas with a long handled razor, so trying to bend and reach down with my hand inside of a buffing pad, was impossible for me to do.
I managed to get to just above my calves with it, and then had to use my regular razor to remove the hairs below it. 

I met with my surgeon again this afternoon, it was a hellish adventure even getting there.
I missed the exit by 2 exits, called people for directions, and ended up going all over fucking Tampa, Hillsborough, Land O' Lakes, Ocala, and several other places before finally arriving there over an hour late.
Lucky for me my doc is a super understanding guy, and that Mindy has the patience of a saint, because I was thisclose to murdering the next person who gave us fucked up directions.


The good news is that he can fix my neck issues, but no date yet.
He wants to wait 2 more months, talk with some other specialist surgeons in this field, he's sending me for another MRI, another CT scan, and back to my pain manager doc until we pick a date for the surgery.

The bad news is that fixing my neck comes with a great deal of risks.
I have to decide if I'm willing to take those risks, and it's a great deal to think about, actually, it's overwhelming.

He has only 2 possible ways of fixing me, and they both come with the exact same risks.
There is a 10% chance of total paralysis, about a 10% chance of not being able to breathe on my own for about 3 months, I would end up having a trach tube installed, that hole thing they put in people's necks.
Other patients who have had this type of revision surgery have had the breathing issue, but after a few months, they are able to breathe on their own again.
And I WILL be in a full halo brace for a minimum of 3 months.

If things go wrong, I would end up being cared for by others for either just a few months, or for the rest of my life.
This is a lot to deal with, it's a great deal to take in, absorb, so I'm really hoping that after he talks with other specialists, that they will have a better idea of how to proceed, maybe another idea with a little less risks.
He did multiple xrays, he also took some still photos and a short video with his cell phone camera, so he can show the other surgeons my range of motion issues that I'm having, just how far my head is stuck down etc.

So anyway, forgive me if I'm not super miss happy go fucking jolly for a few days, I need some time to take this all in and adjust to what I learned today, and be hopeful that he can come up with a better plan, a better way to fix me with less risks.

I've been dealing with back pain, chilly weather, cold spines, swollen ankles, hurting ankles etc, and today I go see my surgeon, so I'm hoping I'll have good news when I get back.

I've taken my shower, just need to put on my clean clothes and attempt to do something with my hair.
Just having a slightly freaked out day, pain, stress, argggh,

It's a shame that diet pills like some of the leftover Lipovox or whatever it is I have sitting here, doesn't help with pain too.
The weather is seriously killing me here.
This is Florida, it's not supposed to be this cold, but it is, and I'm suffering badly.
I can barely move, every muscle is stiff, the rods are frozen, and argh, it's miserable.
I put in a call to my doc, I'm hoping that he calls me back tomorrow and does something to help me because this is just unbearable right now.
None of the pain meds I have are working, I'm tired, sore, and cranky.
Sorry if I've been cranky to any of you, I'm just miserable and can barely do anything at all, and I hate not being able to do things.

It's been cold here the last few days, an even bigger cold front is on the way, and man, do I feel it.
It's times like this that I wish that I had a pop up tv in my room so I could just lay there under my heavy and warm comforter, and watch tv or movies.
I don't even have a tv in my room, never mind a pop up tv, but it would be nice to have one with a dvd player or at least a vcr, so I could just lay there and watch till I fell asleep.
Every joint aches, every muscle is stiff, I just want it to stop but it's not going to until it warms up outside, and it won't be warm-er until maybe the weekend.
It kind of sucks.
I'm just so sick of being stiff and in pain because of the cold weather.
If I still lived back up north in Maine, they would have had to admit me to the hospital by now due to the never ending and excruciating pain that I'm in right now.
Blah.

I absolutely love music, I have it on and playing all day long even while the tv is on.
I use my headphones plugged into my speaker so I can hear it while I work online, and at night, I fall asleep listening to it on my mp3 player which is very similar to ipods.
I have a much cheaper mp3 player, but it works awesome, it's small, but has a large LCD, brightly lit display so that while I'm laying there in my pitch black room, I can read it and go through the music menu to get to a song I want to hear.

There are a lot of nights that I can't sleep at all, insomnia sets in, so I just lay there listening to music for hours and hours.
My body gets the rest it needs, and I get to be entertained and not so bored as the hours tick away and my my brain won't shut off.
I can't sit here all day long, I have to get up and move around, go lay down and stuff, or my body gets super stiff and sore.
I think that's why I love having an mp3 player so much. I don't have to have a big radio in my room and waking the teens up.
I can lay there and listen and not disturb anyone and still get the rest that I need. 

I did a lot of stuff around the house today, and I mean a lot.
I dusted and cleaned off all of the tables and tv stands in the living room, vacuumed all of the rugs, put up all the Christmas decorations, and cleaned the bathroom.

I paced myself though so I didn't over-do things and hurt myself to the point where I would have to call it quits and not do any more of it though.
I did a chore, sat and rested, did another, sat and rested, until I got it all done.
I may still pay for it pain-wise tomorrow, but so far so good, not too bad of pain at all, just my lower back.

The boys helped me with the decorations, they love dong the house up, especially knowing that the girls are coming tomorrow to hang with us for awhile.
They love looking at all of 'auntie kat's' Christmas decorations, so I wanted to make sure everything was out and in it's place for them to enjoy.

And I just feel better.
My mood is like 1,000% better since learning that I will be having my surgery soon, it just really made all the difference in how I was feeling emotionally.
I still can't cook the big holiday meal, but I actually feel like celebrating Christmas now.

The surgeon's office called me this morning, I have an appointment on January 9th, but it's way too early in the am for me to get there, so I'm waiting for them to come back from lunch so I can change that.
He wants to see me so we can talk about the revision surgery.
So, the surgery itself probably won't be until February, but that's ok, at least I know for sure it's going to be done and soon.

My surgeon wasn't there today, he was in surgery, but I saw one of the other surgeons and also spoke to his nurse Cindy, about the revision surgery.
I explained all of what's been going on with me, and the whole choking to death when I puke issue, and she agreed that we need to do this ASAP.

She asked me what I was doing in the next couple of weeks, and I told her spending Christmas with my sons, but I'm totally on a free schedule after the 1st of the year.
She said ok, said she'd talk to him about it, get his nurse Cindy up to speed, and Cindy will also talk with him about it, and then she'll call me with a date for the revision surgery.

I'm so freaking happy!!!!!
I know when, well sorta, it will be either in January or February, and it will also be back at the hospital I had my A/P spine fusion at in 2006, Mease Countryside.
No more icky, horrible, super religious St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa.
Yay!
This makes me way happy for a number of reasons, and I'll post about them at some point.
Things happened during my surgery at St. Joe's, and also the staff there was just really bad.
In ICU, the nurses were so freaking fantastic, but when you have several ICU nurses tell you they are trying everything they can to keep you in ICU as long as possible because once moved over to the women's floor, "You won't be cared for properly", speaks volumes about the kind of care the nursing staff provides over there, and they were right, a world of difference in the care received.

But anyway, we left the doc's with good news, and then came back down here and went and did a little grocery shopping, and I almost choked at how much milk Mindy's family goes through every week.
3 gallons!
OMG! I would flip out if I had to buy that much milk every week at $3.99 per gallon.
We go through a single half gallon a week, if I buy a gallon, it ends up going bad before it's at the halfway mark.

Then I came home and started looking for my external tape drives or hard drives thingy, whatever it's called, that I had tucked away in a drawer. I have some files stored on it that I need for my medical stuff from that surgery in 2006, but I can't find the dang thing.
That means one of two things.
I either put it in the giant box of spare computer parts, keyboards, monitors, internal hard drives, and other assorted computer stuff, that's in the closet, or I tossed it out in the trash when I ditched some computer towers about 8 months or so ago.
I really hope it's in the giant box of parts, I need those files.
Ack!

Ok, off to eat dinner and watch The Dark Knight  with the teens.
Later days!

My surgeon's office called me this morning, asked me if I wanted to come in earlier than my scheduled 2pm appointment.
I said I would call them right back, I needed to ask Mindy, who is taking me there.
I called her, she said yes, so I called them right back and told them we'd be there at 11am.
Yay for early appointments!
He had offered me an 8am appointment as well, but I'm like dude, we live way down in Sarasota, cannot get there at 8am, no way, no how.

But I'm excited to be going in early, speak to him and his other surgical staff, about the problems I'm having and to hopefully schedule the revision surgery.
I hope they can do it like in January or February.
I just want to get it over with.

When I got home today, I grabbed the mail and found a huge envelope from medicare.
I walked in the house, sat down, and tore it open to find a 15 page summary of every single medical test and xray, ctscan, and an item by item cost of my surgery and stay in the hospital.
I read through all 15 pages, checked out what was actually billed, what medicare is paying for, and what I may eventually be billed for.
It's frightening the amount I could end up paying every single doctor, nurse, and person who came in and cleaned my room.
Terrifying.
The image below is a picture I took of just one part of the bill, and only one part of the actual surgery.
The actual surgery bills are broken down into 8 different billing sections, it almost appears as though they billed by the hour and what they did during that hour.
This was section 3 of the surgery bill, and the total for just this one section comes to $32,850.00.
Yes, just one of the 8 billing sections is $32,850.00.
The total of my 9 day stay in the hospital comes to $579,750.00.
The total of what I may be billed comes to $225,500.00.

Holy. fucking. shit.

I went for a little walk just a bit ago, got out into the sunshine and nice weather, gotta get that vitamin D and all ya know.
Anyway, it's a total pain in the ass walking with the neck brace on and my head placed the way it is, my line of sight is downward, not straight ahead, so it's a rather difficult chore to just go for a walk.
And that's when I realized that it also hurts to walk like that.
The pain is right below my shoulders, like the bra strap line, and goes down the whole length of my spine to my tail bone.
I barely made it home without wincing and bending over from it all.
On December 10th, I go see my surgeon and I'll get to tell him about all of the various problems that I've been dealing with since the surgery.
The pain, the head placement issues, the inability to open my mouth and eat anything that isn't a liquid or flattened as thin as paper, that I can't even drink out of a cup, I have to use a straw every single time, the vomit/choking issues, etc etc.

What pisses me off and makes me greatful at the exact same time, is that this surgery saved my life, yet it has seriously reduced my quality of life.
My vertebrae were closing in on my spinal cord, crushing it, it was killing me slowly and eventually it would have closed off completely, stopping my breathing and my heart.
I know that they did the best they could in there, I know there were complications during the surgery, I know that I'm lucky to be alive and all of that, but I really hate how my life is right now.
It's a major struggle for me to do almost everything, and I hate it.
I tried to reach on top of my medicine cabinet to get my electric toothbrush, and I couldn't even look up to see it. When I went to put it back, it was a struggle to try and find the base to put it on without being able to see it.
I can't lift my damn head up, I can't see up to do things.
I can't lift anything over 5 pounds, I struggle to cook meals because I can't turn around to do stuff, can't bend over to get a pot or pan, can't get things out of the cupboard because I can't see what I am trying to reach.

I know, I'm lucky to be alive, I'm greatful, but I fucking hate this.
I want my surgeon to pick a date for the revision surgery and let's just do it, let's just get it over with.
I personally think that it's the rods causing me to not be able to raise my head up, I think they are too long, so when I try to raise my head up, the back of my head gets stopped by the rods.
I also think the top screws are bent the wrong way, if you look at the xray, you'll see the top screws bent upward, and the rods themselves are like right freaking there, so I can't raise my head up.
I want him to fix it, to cut the rods down shorter, remove those top screws, they won't be needed anyway if the rods are shorter, or just do whatever the hell he has to do to allow me to raise my damn head up.
I am so unhappy right now, I hate being unhappy, I hate feeling this way, but every single day I find some new thing that I could do that I can no longer do, and it bothers me so so much.
When standing up, I can't even look into the faces of my sons when they go to hug me, I can't see their faces!
I hate it all so much, everything I can't do, I hate that I'm sad all of the time, I hate that I'm so unhappy, and I hate that I can't even look into the faces of my sons.
I need him to decide what he's going to do and when we are going to do it.
If I have that info, I'll make it through however long until we actually do it, but not knowing when or what's going to be done is just making me more and more unhappy as each day passes.

It was so cold in the house last night, and I wasn't feeling well to begin with, but I didn't take a shower like I normally would have to help my body be able to rest.
It would have taken the hot water tank far too long to heat up the water.
I really wish we had a tankless water heater in this duplex.
It wouldn't have taken long to heat the water up, and I really could have used a long hot shower.
My joints were suffering something fierce last night, the pain meds weren't helping me at all either.
I just laid there tossing and turning, my hips, knees, and ankles were swollen and inflamed from the cold, and if I had been able to take a long hot shower, it would have reduced the inflammation so I could sleep.

I can't take any Advil or NSAIDS because they interfere with bone growth, and my fusion needs to be solid, so all I can take are the pain meds.
I even tried to use the heating pad, but it's not big enough to cover each joint at the same time.
So I grabbed the space heater and plugged it in in my room, and tried to heat up my room enough to help my body stop suffering so badly.
It helped a little bit, I managed to get about 10 minutes of sleep every hour, so I'm hoping that tonight I'll be able to sleep better.
I found a bunch of blankets, and they are in the washer now, so I'm just going to layer them on my bed and hope that all of the layers will help keep my body warm and not cause my joints to get inflamed.

After a whole week of illness, this house is absolutely trashed.
There's stuff everywhere, it smells like sickness in here, I'm grossed out by my own home right now.
I really need to clean it.
I'm thinking that tomorrow, everyone is going to wake up at a reasonable hour, and start cleaning this entire house, every single room.
ALL of the dishes will be done, the bathroom scrubbed, bed linens washed, dried, put back on beds, floors swept, vac'd, and the hard floors mopped.
All the tables cleaned off, and maybe I'll even attempt to clean a little bit of the table of death.
It's so so bad, omg, it's terrible.
I'm completely disgusted.

This is me in my new Blogads t-shirt.
I've been a Blogads publisher and advertiser, for quite a few years now, and about a week or two ago, I filled out a publisher/advert survey, and so they sent me a free t-shirt.
Blogads is by invite only, and sorry, I have no more invites.
I gave them all out to a bunch of bloggers who said they were interested, understood it wasn't going to make them rich, (unless they are Perez, he makes quite a bit from his Blogads) and they all said they understood that it would take time to start building it up, before they made decent money from the ads.
I gave out all 10 invites, and out of the 10, only 1 (one) is still running her adblocks, and she's doing pretty decent from it too.
It kind of irritates me that the other 9 bloggers have wasted those invites, I could have given them to other bloggers who really would have appreciated the ability to have an adblock on their blogs that would make (eventually) them some decent recurring income with hardly any work involved on their parts, simply approve the sold ads when they got bought.
Oh well, it's their loss right?
But it still annoys me that I can't get any more invites because 9 people don't even use it, wasted them, and so I can't get more.
Maybe if I find another blogger who has patience, will leave the adblocks up, will join the hives, promote the hives on their ad pages, keep the blocks above the fold, I will risk it again and ask for another invite or two, but right now, no way.
But I am glad to see that at least the one blogger is making decent money every month from them and appreciates it, she sent me a thank you a few weeks ago after selling a huge paying ad campaign.
I'm very happy for her.

And in this pic, you can see me and my down-turned head from the spine/neck fusion.
That is as high as I can lift it.
Pretty sucky eh?
But yup, that's as far as it goes.
I know I look like total shit in the pic, and the bathroom mirror is way dirty, but we've all been sick the whole week so yeah, that's what I look like right now.

Most of my readers know that I had my neck fusion surgery on September 8th 2008, and have been healing as well as can be expected.
I will also be having a revision surgery in just a few months, because my head placement is all wrong.
My head is tilted and stuck downward, instead of straight ahead.
The surgery was supposed to prevent me from turning side to side, not up and down.
I can turn my head side to side no problem, but up and down is a no go.

But anyway, both of my teen sons have been battling a really nasty cold/virus since last week, and tonight I started getting it.
I'm coughing, sneezing, sniffly and runny nosing it since about 6pm today.
The sniffling, sneezing, and runny nose are not a huge issue, but coughing?
Holy hell it's painful.
Every cough makes my chest muscles, upper back and neck muscles, and head, move and twitch and spasm.
This is not fun at all, it's actually quite painful.
You know what else is really painful as well as super scary?
Throwing up.
Because of the way my head is tilted downward, my jaw cannot open as wide as it did before, and the neck opening is almost compressed like, so throwing up is a very painful and scary ordeal.
Sorry to be graphic, but this is a health blog right?

The rest is behind the cut, it is kind of graphic and sorta gross, so you have been warned.

I'm officially in a depressing state of funk.
Is it a funk, or is it depression?
I think it's both really.
I have no motivation to do much of anything, my thoughts are all over the place, and I'm battling another horrible round of insomnia too.
I'm awake all night long, right up until I have to wake the teens for school, then I'm sleeping for 3, maybe 4 hours, and then still not doing anything, not doing what I need to be doing.

I have work to do but I can't seem to make myself do it.
When I finally do force myself to do it, it's not good, not good at all.
I needed to get a video done for my product review of that new grill I got, and it was already late due to the septic flooding issue we had here, and then I forced myself through the pain to make the video, I did do it, and then I played it back on my pc, and I was absolutely mortified by how I sounded in it.
My speech was slurred like I was drunk, but I wasn't drunk, I haven't had a drink in months, so it has to be the pain meds and muscle relaxers I'm taking.
It was bad, really bad, and that made me feel even worse than I was feeling before.
I deleted it and bought the ingredients to do it again, but because of how I'm feeling, the pain, the depression, I haven't done it again yet.
I AM going to do it tomorrow.
I WILL do it tomorrow.
I have to because I made a promise, and I always keep my word, I just need to not take any of my meds before doing it this time because I don't want to sound like a drunken idiot again.

I also need to get these sporadic migraines under control too.
It seems that every other day now, I'm getting a migraine that knocks me out of commission for a few hours. I have to go lay down in my pitch black room and just wait it out.
I curl up as much as my stupid body will curl up, and clutch my blanket until it passes.
I'm really trying to move out of this funk, to get past this depression over how my body is, how little I'm capable of doing anymore, but when I try to talk myself into feeling better, it doesn't work.
There's so much I can't do anymore, it bothers me so much, I have to walk with a cane now because my head is looking down and I end up losing my balance because I can't properly see in front of me.
I hate this.
I hate how this is, and I hate that I have to have another surgery again, and I hate being miserable inside.
I fake it every single day, I put on a big fake smile for my sons, I put it on for friends and family, it's a big fake smile because everyone else thinks I'm doing just great, that I'm recovering just fine, and physically, yeah, I suppose I am recovering just fine, but mentally?
Fuck no, no, I'm not.
I'm not happy.
I'm not ok with all of this, I'm not ok with the amount of medications, I'm not ok with the pain without taking them, I'm not ok with my body the way it is, and yes, I know, there are people who have it so much worse, I should stop feeling sorry myself, but dammit, none of this is ok.
I'm told it will all be ok, but when?
When is it going to be better, because it's been years now since I've even felt halfway human.
And how am I supposed to feel human with all this hardware inside me?
I know how my body moves, or how little it moves I should say, and it's not human type movements, it's stiff and sore, planned, careful movements so I don't get hurt, so I don't hurt myself.
People look at me like I'm some sort of freak, they stare at me when I go to the store, and I'm so tired of being stared at because of this damn body.
 Before the first spine fusion, they stared at me because of the huge hump on my back, then they stared at me because of the huge back brace, now they stare at me because of the neck brace and the cane, and the way my head looks down.
I'm tired of people asking me what happened too.
They always think it was some sort of accident, and I'm tired of saying no, I had scoliosis, and they don't know what that is so I have to explain, and they still don't get it.
It all makes me want to just stay in the house and not go out anywhere again unless I absoluely have to, and until the next surgery to fix my head is done and I'm fully recovered.
I'm tired, just so tired of it all.

I was digging around in my phone's pictures, and I found this pic I took of myself in the hospital.
That's the first brace I had right after surgery.
It was so uncomfortable and painful to wear, even though I was laying in bed the whole time with a pain pump.
And it smelled funny.
Not funny good, but funny gross.
I actually got nauseous a few times when I caught a whiff of it.
The nurses would come in and give me a bath with this awesome smelling body wash, and my whole body would smell really nice, and then just like 5 minutes later, I'd catch a whiff of the brace, either the plastic parts of it or the padding parts, but something on that brace just really stunk badly.
So between how it smelled and how painful it was on my chest, they switched me to another type of brace.

You can see how swollen my face was too.
My left eye was swollen and black and blue underneath, my left cheek was swollen, my top lip was swollen, basically, my whole face and neck were swollen up.
I also had that bandage on the side of my head from the bolt holes where they bolted me to the table for the surgery.

Just thinking about having to go through that again makes me kind of ill. 

====================

When the teens go food shopping today, I've added to the list, some more acne treatment for them, and a big bottle of cherry Nyquil for me.
I really think I'm starting to come down with a cold.
I have been sneezing all night, I'm stuffed up, and more achy than usual.
It sucks.
Sneezing is as bad as vomiting when your neck is like this.
Every sneeze makes my neck jerk, even in the brace, the jerk sends waves of pain down my entire spine.
I should know that's how it's going to be, I have those rods the entire lentgh of my spine, head to tail bone, every movement effects the entire rod/spine contraption.

I am handling this whole thing really pretty well, I deal with it alright for the most part, but man, when I'm stomach sick or having a sneezing fit like I did this morning, I don't deal with it ok.
I hate that this is what I have to deal with for the rest of my life now.
Every movement is a full body movement, it's not easy at all.

I liked the little cityscape scene that came with this MT theme, but it didn't really fit my blog's name.
I finally got around to making a new header, one that fits the name KatScan.
It's xrays and pictures of all of the spine surgeries I've been through over the years.
My spine fusion from February 2006, and my neck fusion from September 2008.

These surgeries have been such a major part of my life for the last 8+ years now, and I'm still not done.
In about 6 months I get to go have a revision surgery on my neck to fix my head placement, and then I'll be permanently fixed looking straight ahead.
I don't really want another surgery, but I don't want to spend the rest of my life looking down either.
I've got a life to live when this is all over, I'm moving forward, I want to look that way.
Face whatever the future brings my way.

I just got back from my post-op appointment with my surgeon, I'm tired, in serious need of a nap, but wanted to let everyone know how it all went.

I had a series of xrays to see how the new fusion is holding, and it's looking good.
None of the titanium has moved, it's all in place where it's supposed to be, and he says it's doing good.
There will be a revision surgery, probably in about 6 months.
My head is still 20degrees off from being at the right place, meaning, my line of sight is 20degrees down instead of looking straight ahead.
So I'll be having another surgery, where he'll remove a vertebrae, and then install some more hardware which will place my head dead center, and no more movement will ever be possible again.
I have very limited movement right now, no left or right, some down, no up.
After the revision surgery, I will have no movement at all.
That's totally ok with me.
This neck surgery saved my life.
My vertebrae were pinching off my spinal cord, compressing it, I would have died.
Not being able to ever move my head in any direction ever again, is ok with me.
I've accepted all of this, I'm ok with it, so another surgery to set my head placement correctly so that I can look at people's faces and not their chests, is so totally ok with me.
We need to wait the 6 months so that this fusion can heal up a bit, too much trauma all at once is a very bad thing, so we'll wait and do the correction when I've healed up enough.

He's given me permission to sit a little bit longer, I can sit 1 hour, lay down 1 hour, for the next week, and then after that, he told me to do what feels best for me, to not over do anything.
If I feel tired, go lay down and rest, if I have energy, go ahead and sit for awhile.
This is good news for me.
I can now take on some more work, not as much as I was doing before surgery, but I can take on a bit more and that's awesome.

So now it's time to gross you out with some pictures of the stitches coming out.
As I posted this morning, the boys both stayed home sick from school, and Sebastian went with me.
He played the role of the documentary photographer, and got some pretty decent shots of my stitches coming out.
Ready?
These are all clickable for bigger if that's your thing.

Here's the beginning of my stitches coming out.
You can see part of my scar from my spine fusion that I had in February 2006.






















It kind of looks like a zipper.





















That screwed up haircut, is NOT what my sister did, that's the shaving and the cutting that the surgeons did before doing this fusion surgery.
Lovely isn't it?
Super short on one side, long on the other.
They need to keep their day jobs as surgeons.
Hair stylists they are not.
And yes, the stitches do go up into my hairline.
There are 3 more stitches up in my hair that you cannot see.
The stitches in my neck and hair line, hurt like crazy coming out.
I don't know why, but they stung a bit, and 4 times he had to stop while I caught my breath from having them tug at my skin so much.





















All in all, I'm doing ok.
I have some pain which is normal, I have some depression which is also normal.
Both of those things will go away in time, losing mobility isn't an easy thing at all, especially a single mom who's used to doing everything by themselves, for themselves.
Losing the ability to move, to look at things, to have some major down time, is not at all easy to accept, but you start getting used to it, you start accepting it, slowly.
And that's where I'm at.
I'm accepting all of this slowly, I'm dealing with it as best I can.
I know that this surgery saved my life, but at the same time I'm very sad for what I've lost.

But even though the road ahead is still going to be a bumpy one, I have another surgery to face in my future, I'm ok.
I can work for now, I can start being a little more productive, start doing more at home without over doing it, and start getting some of my life back.
I know that in 6 months or so, I'll be right back here recovering from another surgery, but that's ok, it really is.
I'm alive, I'm still here to watch my sons grow up, to laugh and play with them, to be here, and that's what is the most important.

I need to get my butt in gear, I am leaving at 11am to go get my stitches out.
All the way to Safety Harbor.
Ugh.
Such a long, long drive.
Mindy is taking me, my sis is sick with some nasty cold thing and strep throat.
And both my boys are home from school sick too.
They both have stuffy heads, headaches, just feeling miserable.
I really hope that they don't have what she has, I can't even imagine having strep with my neck like this.
Yuck.

I've been so overwhelmed with the outpouring of support from the boobiethon donors.
It's been absolutely incredible, I am just so so greatful, thank you all so much!
I was surprised and greatful to just get the first $359, but it's now over $1,000.
Absolutely amazing and so needed.
I still don't have the ok to be working again, I'm hoping to get that today at my appointment, but if not, I know that I will be able to pay all of my bills thanks to all of the people who have donated to me in support of the boobiethon.
I can't wait to be able to volunteer again next year, it's such a good cause and it's something that I just love doing.

In some of my bored downtime, I have been playing on Twittermoms.
I started a new group, I was feeling "alone", so if you're on Twitter, and on Twittermoms, and an atheist, agnostic, or just not sure, come join my small group for Atheist Moms.
It's small but growing.

Ok, time to go get dressed so I can get these itchy stitches out.
Later days!

The nurse was here this morning, a different nurse than the ones who have been here before, and she didn't like the way that we've been changing out bandages.
She wanted to do it a different way, so she had me lay on the end of my bed, face down.
This was not good.
Within minutes, it felt like my throat was being squished, my vocal cords felt tight and compressed, and I literally couldn't breathe.
I had to roll over and she was like "what are you doing?!"
I told her that I've not laid on my stomach before, I don't sleep that way, and I've never laid on my stomach to have the bandages changed, and I couldn't breathe, it was hurting me quite badly.
She was "oh, I'm sorry."
I told her to note that in my chart, no face-down bandage changes ever again.
I was actually kind of scared at how quickly I couldn't breathe, at how much it hurt.
She finished up with me on my side, and she left.
She didn't know anything about why she was changing my bandages, like she didn't read my chart.
It says why they are doing this in my chart, I shouldn't have to explain the whole 2006 spine fusion and the new fusion to the nurses when they get here, they should read my chart, know what's going on, and be prepared for what my back looks like before they get started.

After she left, Mark woke up and headed into the bathroom.
I was in the kitchen when he walked past me, and I had to do a double take.
He had his whole face covered in stuff, like one of my face masks.
I asked him what that was for, and he told me he's started putting on a face mask at night because it helps to clear up his acne .
I was like, oookaaay, and I giggled a wee little bit, and he told me not to laugh, he said it really works, his face always looks really good in the morning when he does it.
Old zits are dried up, and no new zits have formed over night.

Hey, whatever works right?

I took a shower just now, I really needed to get in there and get myself clean after sweating so much over the last 2 days.
After I got myself all clean, as much as I can anyway without getting the stitches wet, I decided to make an attempt at shaving off the monster leg hairs.
I was already seated on my old lady shower chair, I lathered up my right leg with shaving cream, and tried to start shaving at the ankle and work my way up like normal.
I couldn't do it.
I tried again.
Nope, absolutely no flexibility to bend and reach that low on my leg.

This surgery, this spine fusion, because it's connected to the titanium rods that I had placed in there in 2006 at the shoulder level, seems to make me unable to reach below mid calf level.
I cannot go any further.
Before this neck fusion, I had a small bit of trouble shaving my legs and putting shoes on, tying laces and stuff like that, but I could do it, it just took a little longer.
But now I can't bend over far enough to reach below my calves.
I wasn't expecting that.
I knew I wouldn't be able to turn my head much anymore, looking left and right would be gone, looking up at the sky, but not being able to fully bend over and reach my ankles?
Nope, I didn't expect it.

But my legs were in dire need of shaving, so I wrapped one of my towels around my body and called Sebastian to come in.
I showed him what to do on a part of my leg I could reach, and then handed him the razor and told him to go for it, be gentle, but shave away.
He did a really good job and he didn't mind helping me.
He said he was sorry that I couldn't do this anymore, that he felt bad that I can't do some stuff anymore.
Then he got a bit quiet so I asked him what he was thinking.
He said that he knows this sucks for me not being able to do stuff anymore, but how glad he is that I'm alive, that knowing that without this surgery I would have died, so not being able to do stuff isn't really that important, but he understands how it makes me feel.
He said it's kind of selfish of him to be so happy that I'm still here when he knows how sad it makes me that I can't do things anymore, and he's sorry about that.

Yes it does bother me that I've lost a lot of mobility, that there are things I can't do anymore, things I don't even know I can't do anymore, but it's ok, I'm dealing with it.
I'm sure I'll have some mini-meltdowns as I discover more things I can't do, but I have my little fit, I cry, I yell, and then I get over it.
Being pissed about it won't change it, nothing will change it, so all I can do is take note of the things I can't do, have myself a good cry, and then keep on going.
It's just the way it's going to be from here on out.
Get knocked down, get back up, keep on going.

I went and got my newest brace, and I'll talk about that in a minute.
But right now, I want to talk about the economic crisis that our country is dealing with.
Every Friday, Oprah's show is on live, and today she had a money expert whose name escapes me right now, Ally something, (bald guy, handsome, well dressed) and Suze Orman came on after his segment.
Both of these money experts told it like it is and to also not panic, to leave your money in the bank, it's going to be ok.
Suze Orman talked about ways to save money, what types of things to invest in like treasury bonds, and she named a very specific type of futures trading and the safest places to invest your money in so that when this crisis is over, you will be ok.

The whole reason all of us are in this situation, is because people who couldn't afford to buy a home, were told they could by banks who loaned them that money.
They spent more than they had, they tried to live beyond their means, they wanted the American dream, and sorry, not everyone can afford to live that dream.
I know I can't and probably never will.

I know that I'm feeling the crunch of this crisis when it comes to buying groceries.
The price of everything has been steadily on the rise for months now, and so buying food for 2 growing young men has been a huge challenge for me.
I don't want the teens to eat peanut butter and jelly and Ramen noodles until it's coming out of their ears, but I can't afford to feed them all the super expensive cuts of beef either.
Right now with me being unable to do any cooking, they are eating easy foods, microwave crap, lots of sliced deli meat sandwiches, stuff like that.
I have a feeling that things are going to get even harder for me and all of you as well.
It's going to get much much worse before it will start getting better.
This is a very difficult period of time we're all living in, and I'm trying so hard not to panic like both Ally and Suze said, but I can't help myself.
I already live at the bottom of the financial totem pole, I live well below the poverty level receiving SSDI and making a small amount through blogging every month.
I follow the income earnings guidelines set forth by SSDI but man, how I wish I wasn't disabled, how I wish I could work a real job again.
This whole crisis has me scared that things are going to get worse for me and all of us, this whole thing really sucks.

Anyway, Mindy took me down to the local Hanger office to get my new brace.
They ended up fitting me with a pediatric size 5 chin brace.
It fits the back part of my old brace, but the new front part is a pediatric size chin brace.
That should tell you how small my neck is. Ha!

It does fit better, it holds my head up nice and straight, but because of it's tiny size, my cheeks get squished up pretty bad.
I look like I'm making a kissy-fish-face all the time now.
I really hope my face doesn't "keep" that shape when the 3 months is over, that would really suck.
But it does it's job, what it's supposed to, so I'll deal with it.

The brace company, Hanger Prosthetic and Orthotics, called me a little bit ago.
The girl on the phone said they received the order from my surgeon and have been trying to figure out what type of brace will fit and work best for me.
I have a short neck, so they may actually have to make a custom one for me.
The regular adult size is too big for me, and the child/young adult size is too small, so it may come down to making a custom fit neck brace for me.

It's important that I have one that fits correctly because I have to wear it for 3 months, possibly longer, for 24 hours a day.
I am allowed to take it off for one hour per day and just lay perfectly flat in my bed for that hour, and allow my skin to breathe and my neck muscles to relax.
I've been doing that every single day because it feels so good to let air touch my skin, to not be confined and hot.
I go in and grab my Sandisk mp3 player, lay down and take off the brace, and just listen to music for that whole hour.
It's nice and relaxing, comfortable.

I even have to wear the brace while taking a shower.
The braces come with changeable padding, so when the brace gets wet in the shower, I can change out the wet pads and put in the clean and dry ones, and then lay the wet ones flat to dry.

I really wish it was "winter" here because it is so hot, and wearing a brace is like wearing a turtleneck in the middle of summer.
It's hot.
The braces have all of that padding which makes it even hotter, and I just sweat and sweat while wearing it.
It really is like wearing a big turtleneck sweater in the summer.
So I'm hopeful that the new brace is lighter somehow, not so stuffy and hot feeling, but I'm sure it won't be though.
It's job is to hold the neck in position, and the padding is to make sure the skin isn't right up against the hard plastic of the contraption.
It's kind of miserable wearing a neck brace, you don't realize how much you move your head and neck every day until you can't do it anymore.
I'm dealing with it all though, getting used to it I guess you could say.

Anyway, I'm hopeful that tomorrow they will have a brace that actually fits the way it's supposed to, or can custom make one that will fit right.
I want to heal up the right way with my head straight, not looking down, and the braces I have are too big so my neck is straining to hold me in place, and because it doesn't fit right, my head ends up falling down and that is so not the way I want to permanently heal up.

I'm having a day here.
I'm on some hefty restrictions, no lifting anything at all, no doing laundry or cleaning or cooking anything that would make me have to bend over etc, but I have stuff that needs to be done and well, it isn't getting done.
And then there's the sitting/laying down restriction.
I am allowed to sit for 20 minutes every 4 hours and then lay down again.
It's boring and the tv is on a low stand, so it's hard to entertain myself with movies or tv shows. What I need is one of those tv lifts things on a remote, so I can get it to the perfect height for me while I lay on the couch.

And I'm feeling overwhelmed by the generosity of the people who are donating money to me for the boobiethon.
I still feel bad about not being able to donate my time this year, it's just something I've done that makes me feel good, and to not be able to do it this year is making me feel bad.
I can't help it, I just feel bad that I can't help this year.
But next year, I'll be right on it, back editing photos every day and helping spread the word as much as I can.
I usually also send in my photo every year, and I can't do that this year either.
I have a stitch line under my right breast from the chest tube I had to have, and I'm still covered in the sticky stuff from all of the tape and heart monitor things, all over my whole upper body.
Basically, my chest looks like crap and I'm not comfortable sending in a pic like that.
I'm not super vain, but I don't think anyone would want to see all that tape and the stitches with a big nasty scab on it too.
I can't send in a covered pic either.
I haven't been able to put a bra on since the day I went in for surgery, September 8th.
It hurts to even put on a clean t-shirt, and I did try to put a bra on, but it was a total no go, total wicked bad pain shot through my upper back and shoulders.

Anyway, I wanted to hop on here and say thank you to everyone who is donating money to me and the boobiethon, you're doing an awesome thing, and if you haven't donated yet, do it.
Save the boobies!

My stitches are itching like crazy, it's driving me absolutely freaking crazy!
I'm not scratching them though, I'm gently massaging them about every 10-15 minutes, gently rubbing the skin around them, trying to make the itchies go away but it's not really helping.
It would be awesome if I could use some anti-itch creme or something on them to take the edge off.
It's insane how badly they itch.

My surgical follow up appointment is on October 7th, that's when they are going to take them out.
That's a wicked long time to have stitches in.
The standard length of time is 14 days or you run the risk of skin growing over the threads and making it very difficult to take them out.
Difficult as in wicked bad awful painful.
Not looking forward to that because mine have now been in since the 8th, that's 21 days.
It will be 29 days when they finally come out, that's way too long.
The nurses who are coming here every other day now to take vitals and change the bandages, keep telling me that I need to get these stitches out, and I keep telling them when my appointment is, but they keep saying that's too long, it's going to be hard to get them all out.

What am I supposed to do about that?!
I've called my doc, I have an appointment, I have told them about the nurses opinions on the stitches, there's not much else I can do.

It's been 21 days since the surgery, and I'm still bruised up.
My arms are a disgusting shade of green and yellow mixed with some blue and purple.
I still have needle marks and surgical tape stuff on my arms too.

*Edited at 1:30am to add a new picture.*
Sebastian helped me a bit ago with the itch problem, he took off the bandage and was going to just gently rub along the sides of the scar/stitch line and wipe it down with a baby wipe to get it a little clean for me because the whole length of it itches wicked way bad, and that's when we figured out why it is itching so much.
It's all healed up, there are no open areas at all, but where the stitches are, there are some small scabs.
No, he did not pick them off, he simply wiped them off with a baby wipe and a skin prep wipe one of the nurses left here.
A few of the nurses have left the basic wound care supplies in the little hospital tub/bin that all patients take home.
It usually has the standard stuff like toothpaste, a toothbrush, baby powder, lotion, and the hospital body wash stuff.
I'm sure those of you who have ever been in the hospital for a stay, or had a family member in for a stay, know what little tub/bin thing I'm talking about.
They are usually pink no matter what hospital you go to, pink tub/bins full of body care supplies to make your stay in the hospital easier.

Anyway, all of those scabs are the reason it itches.
They are all healed and dried up, but just sitting on my skin, so he took a baby wipe and just wiped them all off.
It felt sooooo good, OMG, it felt awesome.
Then he took one of the skin prep wipes and wiped the whole suture line and the sides of the line, all over, and then put the bandage back on and taped it down really good.
It's looking really good, no open areas, no infection spots, all healed up.
I can't see my own back, so I had him take a picture of it for me.
You can click it for bigger if you want, unless of course stuff like this grosses you out, but I promise there's no blood, no puss, nothing disgusting at all.

I'm sooo glad I had Sebastian* do that, it doesn't itch anymore at all.
Yay!




















Sebastian was not awake until 1:30am. He went to bed at a little before midnight because he was helping me clean off the itchies.
I'd say right after I originally made this post is when I asked him to do it for me.
The original plan was to just wipe my back down with a baby wipe, to just get it a little clean, (can't get my back wet till the stitches come out) and that's when he saw all the little scabs and when he started wiping, they just started falling off.

The home nurse was already here at like 9am, and Mindy and her husband are coming over to fix the ac unit today, and my sister will be coming over around dinner time to fix my hair for me.
I'm exhausted already.
I'm just so tired all of the time right now.
Recovering from surgery takes a lot out of you.

You know what sucks though?
I can't lay on my sides at night.
It hurts my neck wicked bad to even try to roll over, but laying on my back all of the time hurts too.
It hurts my back.
I really hope it doesn't stay like that forever, it would suck big time to never be able to lay in any other position than on my back.

Oh yeah, my legs need shaving too.
They are like super monster hairy but I can't shave them.
I can't lean forward long enough to do them, it hurts my neck wicked fierce.
Oh well.

I went in and sat on my old lady shower chair, and took a half assed shower.
I cannot get my sutures wet, so I can't wash my hair.
What am I saying?!
I can't wash my hair anyway, it's far too painful to even try to lift and hold my arms up to even try to wash my hair, plus, if I do manage to get it washed and conditioned, I can't brush out all the knots and stuff.
It would take me all damn night and I still wouldn't be able to do it, the teens can't do it, they'd hurt me, so fuck it, I will wait for either nurse Lisa to come back and help me like she said she would, or for my sister to have some time to help me.
But each day that passes that my hair isn't getting taken care of, it gets worse and worse.
I'm going to end up having to get it all cut off because of the mats.
That sucks.
Nurse Lisa said when she gets me on her schedule again, (right now I have Greg) she will schedule me for a min of 2 hours, and she'll help me shower, wash and condition my hair, and then she'll slowly comb it all out using a detangler, and then french braid it so it can't get all matted like this again.

After I showered, I put on clean undies, clean shorts, and my new Obama shirt.
Yup, I'm voting for Obama.
What's happened over the last few days really clinched it for me.
McCain suspending his campaign, wanting to postpone the debates, all over this money crisis is just bullshit in my opinion.
Never has the democratic process been put on hold because of some sort of crisis, never.
 The people deserve the debates, and we also deserve to see Palin interviewed by the media, more than just rah rah cheerleader Katie Couric whom I despise anyway.
Reporters allowed to photograph her only, not allowed to be there while she met the leaders of other countries, only to take her pic, not film those meetings, is crap.
And I do love how most of them were all oooh and ahhh over how "pretty" she is.
Look, she's running to be VP, not a beauty queen pageant winner.

Anyway, I thought I'd try and take a pic of one of the bolt holes in my head.
I took this myself, that's an accomplishment I tell ya.
I can't even frigging eat well but I did manage a picture...LOL

And yes, the sides of my head were shaved, hairs cut super short, in order to bolt me to the table.
Believe me, I know how absolutely ridiculous the hair on the sides looks right now.
Man, if you could see the rest of my hair, you'd be all WTF?
It's awful.

I am one of those people that wants to hurry up and go.
You know what I mean?
I want to be recovered and now, I want my life back.
I've been saying that for like 7 years now, and it hasn't happened yet.
Frustrating.
I'm tired of this neck brace already, I'm tired of sweating to death in it, I'm tired of feeling like my head weighs a million pounds.
If I sit up, my head falls forward, and if I lay down, it is in the right place, but dammit, I'm tired of laying down!
I kinda wish I had never thrown out the old junky recliner I had, because then I'd at least be sitting up, but my head would be laid back and resting.
It was a piece of crap though, it had to go.

The nurse came today, he did my neuro checks which I pass every single time, I'm not showing any signs of wires and stuff not firing like they are supposed to, so that's good.
We're down to changing the bandages every other day now, and the stitches all look good.
No draining, no redness, healing really nicely.

I'm still waiting on the brace people to call me about a new brace, there just has to be something better fitting than the braces I have right now, there has to be.
The nurse has a call in to Cindy, my surgeon's nurse, he just has some questions for her about my stuff. He says it's not bad stuff, just some questions.

Anyway, I'm just really bored and antsy, and tired.
I'm sleeping a lot. I don't know if that's good or bad, but it passes the time ya know?
Later days.

I gave myself a scare last night.
See, I have bolt wounds on the side of my head from where I was bolted to the table during surgery, (I promise I will explain how it all went soon) and the nurse had cleaned them really good yesterday and put some Staphaseptic on them.
Well last night I reached up to the left side of my head to rub my temples, they sorta ache a bit, and this chunky thing came off in my fingers.
It was sort of like a scab but yellow-ish in color, and had some small hairs attached to it.
I didn't scratch it, I just rubbed my temples, and to have this thing fall off, it was really gross.
Then it started bleeding and it wouldn't stop, so I had Sebastian do his best to put a band-aid on it.
The nurse came today and took the band-aid off, cleaned it, and said it looked good, but man, it was super scary having it bleed like that.

I had ordered the new HDTV antenna that I need to be able to watch tv with the converter box, and it came today.
It's much much bigger than I thought it was, it really needs to be mounted outside, but I tried to hook it up today anyway.
Bad idea.
It's too heavy, I couldn't get it to work, it probably does need to be mounted outside on the wood shutters, and so yeah, by the time I gave up on it and put it back in the box, I had really over done it and now I'm paying for it.
 But there is a good thing about doing that, something pulled in my neck and now my head is staying up much better, straighter I think. hahahaha
Maybe I pulled the muscles where they need to go?
Don't know.
The pain is subsiding a bit now and I need to eat something.

Oh, speaking of eating, I sent the boys grocery shopping with a list and everything today.
They came back with a ton of wrong items, items not on the list, and a whole bunch of items that were on the list, didn't get bought at all.
They tried I suppose, this is a lot of pressure on them, I know that, so I really can't complain too too much that they screw things up a little bit.

You have no idea how hard it is to just lay down and relax, to stay relaxed.
I'm a single mom, there's things that I should be doing like laundry, dishes, cooking meals, and I simply can't.
I spend all my time either on my couch watching the tube or trying to be on line answering emails.
I can't sit here long though, like 20 minutes tops, and then I have to go lay down for hours.
It really kinda sucks.

But I did talk to my doctor's nurse, Cindy, today about the brace, they are calling the brace people to see about getting a custom fit brace for me because of how short my neck is, and because the ones they make simply are far too big for me.
It will be really nice to have a brace that fits.

Not much else is going on, nothing can be, so back to the couch I go.
Gossip Girl is on.
Later days.

I'm still chugging along trying to get through this first week at home, I have to keep telling myself to just relax, that the first week is always so so  hard, that it really is the worst, so I don't try and over do things.
A lot of just laying down and sleeping.

Mindy was here almost all day long, she did a really great job cleaning my house, it looks wicked nice and clean in here, the teens better keep it this way. LOL
Then she went home and came back with some big huge pans of food.
Her husband Chris made dinner for us, some chicken alfredo, bread sticks, and salad.
It was all so yummy.
He used to work at the Olive Garden, it's their alfredo recipe, so yeah, it's super yummy.
When Chris was here this morning, he took a look at my AC unit, and he's going to come back and fix it for me next weekend.
Box it in to the right size for the AC, clean it up, get it working right again.
It's simply not blowing as cold as it used to, it's not sitting in the housing correctly, and the leaking is because of all of those things plus all box units leak when it gets super humid.
So it will be wicked nice to have it fixed and cool in the house again.

I have a ton of emails and comments in my inbox that I just don't know when I'll be able to get to, if I'll be able to get to them at all, but I wanted you to all know that I have read them and appreciate all of the support and words of encouragement, it's really appreciated.

I did spend the majority of the day laying down and resting, I even slept for awhile, and that is my plan of attack.
My face is still wicked swollen up which makes me feel weird and stuff.
I know the swelling will go down, it's just a matter of time.
For now though, I feel like I either got beat with a baseball bat, or I am a balloon.
People keep telling me it doesn't look so bad, but I've seen my face in the mirror, I know what it looks like.
Doc said it will be ok, it will heal up, but for awhile it's gonna look like total crap.

Ok, time to get back to my couch, watch a little Law and Order repeats and stuff.
Later days. 

Here's my new neck fusion, it goes all the way up, almost touches my skull bone.
Pretty wild eh?
I took this yesterday using my cellphone while at the surgeon's office.
I went in because I'm having a concern with how my head is positioned, instead of looking up and facing straight ahead, I'm looking down.
It may be super tight and stiff muscles, which is what I believe it is, or it could be that the last joint isn't strong enough to hold my head up.
I also believe that my brace is causing the extreme muscle stiffness.

I experimented on the way home, reclining the seat all the way back, seat belt on, and brace off, and just relaxed the entire way home home.
Mindy and I just chatted about movies, hot guys, hot chicks in movies, (neither of us think there's anything even remotely attractive about Angelina Jolie. Nada.) and just chilled all the way home.
By the time we got here, my muscles had relaxed, totally, I was able to put my head up.
I then put my brace back on to to be safe and walk back in the house.
In the less than 2 minutes it took, my neck had pinched and tightened back up, squishing my head down again.
It seems obvious to me that the brace is all wrong, causing my muscles to become hyper-reflexive, and then lock in position.
So, I'm leaving off the super hard, too-big-for-me-brace, and I'm going to call Walgreen's and see if they have any of the soft padded neck braces, just to wear for support.
But it's so super obvious to me that the current hard plastic brace is causing my muscles to tighten up and lock, so I'm going to use a soft brace for support, and just do a ton of relaxing. Me and my couch and movie collection, will be best of friends for the next few months.
I'm determined to let my muscles just relax and heal nicely, not fighting to stay in a brace that's too big for my neck.
The brace guys even said to me in the hospital, "you short neck people always give us a hard time."  So I have a short neck, they don't make smaller braces, so my muscles are straining to fit in a brace that doesn't fit me.
Not any more.
I'm going to do what feels right to do, use a soft brace for support and relax non-stop.

And speaking of Mindy, she's being so super awesome, not only driving me to my doc appointments and stuff, but she's really helping me by cleaning my house.
It's gotten totally away from me over the last few months with all the shoulder pain that started in May and kept up all summer, being put on restrictions, and now the surgery that has even bigger restrictions to not do anything at all, so yeah, my house really needs the cleaning help.
She's going to be starting up her own house cleaning business, so cleaning my mess is giving her a start, I'll happily write a glowing letter of recommendation for her too.
She was only able to tackle my kitchen and bathroom yesterday, but damn, it looks a million times better in those rooms now.
I was so embarrassed about the state of my house, but being on some sort of medical restriction since the middle of May, the most I've been able to do is running the vac, doing the dishes and laundry, and general cleaning of the bathroom, that's it.
There's like 6 inches of dust in this house, and man, I felt so bad yesterday showing her how much my house has escaped me, I'm a clean person, not being able to do any real cleaning has just been a nightmare for my OCD.
So a biggie thank you to Mindy for getting it all back in shape for me, it is so much appreciated.

Ok, need to get back to laying down and relaxing before the nurse gets here to change out my dressings and stuff.

So I'm having an issue with my head, how it's angled, it could all be in my head, it could just be really tight and stiff muscles that will loosen up after a few weeks of healing, but it's a concern, so I'm heading in to see my surgeon today to have some xrays done, get my neck brace adjusted if that's what needs to be done etc.

The first week or so at home is always the hardest, the most painful, the most emotional, so yesterday was really just sucky for me.
I spent almost all day crying yesterday, just feeling really down on myself, sad, just an emotional basket case you could say.

Anyway, I'll be back around off and on later, let you know how it goes and stuff, and I will start telling how the whole surgery was from my view, it's much different than what everyone else experienced.
Later days.

Well there it is, my new scar line.
It's pretty big and badass looking, it goes all the way up into my hair line which you can see to the far left of it all.

My skin heals incredibly fast as you can't even see the remnants of my scar from my AP spine fusion from February 2006 any more.
It's not visible at all on my back, so I know that this scar line will heal up just as nicely as that one did.
I have one minor complaint, but as I've been reminded, I'm alive, that's more important.

The details of the fusion now go like this; I am permanently fused from C1-S1, that is the full length of the spine, there is no space at all, top to bottom, what the fuck else can go wrong with my spine?
Not fucking much I would think.
I'm like the terminator in there now, all fucking titanium but absolutely no power.

Weak, human, powerless to do anything about anything.
While I have my small moments of self pity, tears, feeling all shitty for myself, I was reminded that I'm a mother and that I'm alive, I'm here and I need to stop feeling all shitty for myself.
Indeed.
Mother is the word for god in the hearts and on the lips of children.
I need to remember to do my crying in private, it's still all too much for them to handle.

Hey all, I am finally back home, it was a long, completely fucked up hospital experience.
I will get to blogging about it all but not just yet.
Sitting here to read emails, to type, is not an easy task just yet, my head is being held by a neck brace in an awkward position, so thank goodness for spell check..LoLz

This whole thing was very physically hard on me, terrifying for my sons, and frustrating to be told I could go home tomorrow over and over, yet it never happened every single day, until today that is.
I finally had a massive blow out, started screaming, yelling, cursing and being a bitch about the care I was receiving and sit, and well, they don't really like it when atheists start swearing  in a catholic hospital. hahahaha

Anyway, I'll explain the whole trip, all the things that went wrong and everything else over a few days at a time.
I really can't handle sitting for long periods just yet.
But it's so so so good to be home, thank you all for the well wishes and good thoughts, they are all so very much appreciated.
Be back again tomorrow morning maybe.
Later days!

I'm up, showered, dressed, and ready to go.
I'll be leaving shortly to go, and I'll be getting this laminectomy done and coming home in a week.
Keep fingers, toes, all extra appendages crossed for me, yadda yadda, but it's gonna be alright.

I'll be blogging using Twitpic, that's my link, so you can stay updated.
Later days.

After a torturous last 48 hours, my surgery on Monday, is going on as planned.
I went to the stress test today, the cardiac specialist put me through the ringer, he slapped me on the treadmill, injected some sort of something into me to make my heart go faster, then he made the treadmill go faster.
And when it all finally stopped, he said my heart is 100% ok to have surgery, and as a matter of fact, it's in incredible shape for someone who has been smoking for the last 19 years.
I know I need to quit and I will, I try, I do ok for a bit, and then I fail again.
It happens, it's my biggest fault, that I have to battle my addiction to nicotine, and I will win it eventually.

But I passed that test with flying fucking colors, and then came home where I figured I'd chill and wait to hear more.
I wasn't even home 20 minutes before Cindy (surgeon's nurse) called me and said "Hey Kat, you've been through a lot, you've been a real trooper, but we need you to do two more things, and if you do, we can do surgery on Monday as planned."
So I went back to SMH, (Sarasota Memorial Hospital) had 1 final chest xray so they have the newest view of my neck and spine, and then 1 final blood draw.
While waiting to get the xray, I got a call from the neck brace people.
They asked my height and weight, and said when I wake up on Monday from the surgery, they will be there with the neck brace.
Then I had to run around and find the lab, the hospital moved it to an all new building, there was a slight mishap with the lab script being faxed to the wrong location, but we got that handled in minutes, I gave the 4 vials, and I came home again.

I'm emotionally drained, I'm exhausted.
What my primary doc did to me on Wednesday afternoon threw a wrench in everything, sent me spiraling and it battered me down hard.
But Cindy, she fucking rocks, she busted her ass and got me back in.
And Doc Altierri, he rocks for giving me express cardiac treatment and clearance to go forward.

I'm spending Saturday and Sunday with my sons, hanging out watching movies, just hanging together playing some rounds of guitar hero or rock band, heck, I may even play a round or two of Gears of War, and then Monday morning, Mindy will drive me to St. Joseph's really freaking early in the morning, and I'll start my surgery around 8am.
I'll be back in just a few days, I will be coming home, things will be ok.
I do have to start a new med, to try and help lower my blood pressure, if it even can be, there's no medical reason that it's high that can be found, no blood clots, no closing or blocked arteries, my heart pumps on just fine, but we're going to try so, whatever right?

I have some work to try and knock out, so bear with me, it has to be done, I sorta need that paycheck when I get back home hahaha.
So anyway, thanks for all the supportive comments and emails, sorry I just don't have the time to respond to them all, it's been kinda crazy around here and I only have 2 days left to get my work done and spend time with my boys, but really, thanks for being here for me, I appreciate it more than I can say.

I went in yesterday for my pre-surgery physical, and she didn't clear me.
She said that my blood pressure was too high, she couldn't give me clearance because she thinks I'll have a heart attack on the table.
Even though every single heart test I've had in the last 4 months, has come out clear.
So she called my surgeon and canceled my surgery.

She then started talking about the high white cell count, all docs freak out over this, they tell me I have the white cell count of someone who is dying of leukemia.
This happened last year, October 2007 to be exact, and I went through a hematology consult and an Imdium scan.
The results of both tests concurred.
Negative white cell study.
That means I'm not sick.

Then she tells me that when I went to the ER 3-4 months ago for that wicked shoulder pain I was dealing with, and the ER doc thought, because my blood pressure was so high, that I was either having a heart attack or had an arterial blood clot, but the tests all came back clean.
No heart problems at all.
But.
During the CT angiogram, the radiologist noted a spot on my liver.
That was on June 6, 2008.
That night, the ER doc never had me sign out of the ER, he gave me no paperwork telling me to have an ultrasound of my liver, but yesterday, my primary doc is telling me about that report, about the spot, she thinks that may be the reason for the high white cells, she doesn't know.

But what we do know is that I went to a cardiac specialist this morning who finds nothing wrong, but to be safe, I have to go back in tomorrow and have a cardiac nuclear stress test.
He said if that comes out fine, that he'll clear me for the surgery, but it's too late now for the Monday date, the OR was canceled, I missed the pre-surgery appointment at the hospital today to go see this cardiac specialist, my surgeon canceled it, it's done, too late.
It will have to be totall rescheduled, I'll have to go through all the pre-surgery tests all over again because they all have to be done within 1 week of the surgery.
 Then this Tuesday coming, I have to go in for an echo cardiogram, ya know, seeing as my surgery is canceled.

To say I'm mad is an understatement, I'm fucking pissed, I'm stressed, an I can't eat anything at all for 24 hours before this stress test tomorrow morning at 11am, so when I got home this morning from his office at like 10ish, I ate a bowl of cereal because I was nauseous.
I'm not allowed to eat anything else at all, and I cannot drink much either, I can have enough water to wash down my pain pills, but that's it.
I'll be completely weak, nauseous, and dehydrated tomorrow morning, which will be causing me stress and anxiety, which will make my blood pressure high and probably cause me to fail the fucking test.

Everything is just a big huge fucking mess.
They fucked with my life for a high blood pressure that is caused by the neck issue, they canceled my surgery that will save my fucking life.
That ER doc in June didn't tell me about the spot on my liver, but now I have to go get that taken care of too, get an ultrasound on it, and I'll probably have to go through another nuclear hematology consult as well to rule out the leukemia they fucking think I'm dying of.
Don't you fucking think that with all the fucking MRIs, CT scans, xrays, blood tests, urine tests, ultrasounds, and every fucking other test I've been through, that if I had fucking leukemia, it would have been found by now?
Don't you think I'd know!?!
Wouldn't I be sick, have some sort of pain, something?!
Do I match some of those symptoms like bone and joint pain?
Yes, but uh, I have 26 fucking inches of titanium running the length of my spine!!!!!!!
I have no other symptoms of it other than the bone and joint pain, and the high white cell count, that's it, and I've had that high white cell count for 2.5 years now, since my spine fusion.
Wouldn't someone know?
Wouldn't someone have figured that out by now with everything I've been through medically?

I'm not ok!
I'm angry, sad, stressed, pissed, hurt, and it's causing my kids to be scared to death.
Surgery, no surgery, heart disease, leukemia, what the fuck else are these assholes going to put me and my kids through?!
This is all too fucking much, it's just too much, I can't cope with everything that's happening right now, and I want to apologize to my employers who are waiting on me to get work done.
I will get it done, but I need to get a grip, I need to rest, I need to try and get this sorted out, get people to listen to me, read the test results, figure out that all of the shit is because of my spine being all fucked up.

And ya know what sucks?
All of the doctors want a medical history I can't give them, I'm adopted, I have nothing to show them, nothing to tell them, they stare at me, tell me this all looks genetic, that my birth parents gave me all of this, but they need to know and I can't give them any answers.
I hear from them about all of these things that are inside my body, these fluid filled sacks that are attached to my spine, that they don't know what they are, but there are a lot of them, my vertebrae closing like this, it's genetic, this is all genetic, it's all part of a medical history I know nothing about, and the more tests they do, the more they find, and the more they say big bad scary words about death and dying, and for fucks sake people, pick the one that is gonna kill me first and fix it, then we'll work on the next one and so on.

This is all just too much and I feel like I'm going crazy, like I just want to quit, just stop, I can't do this anymore.
My mom and dad called me last night, my sister had called them, told them what was going on, they told me to just keep going, to keep trying, to type out whatever I have to to get through all of this, that it's ok.
But it's not ok, it really isn't.
I'm being told I'm slowly dying, that I have diseases and shit which are killing me, and I'm supposed to be ok?
How the hell am I supposed to be ok after all of the hell I've already been through, and be told that there's even more?
How would anyone be ok with all of this?!
And please, please, please, do not tell me that god only gives us what we can handle, that he gives us tests to help us be better people, that this is all being done because he has a purpose for me.
That's absolute bullshit, I've been through more than enough fucking medical shit in my lifetime.
I was born a medical fuck up, that's why my birth parents left me in the hospital where I spent the first 6 weeks of my life, they were told I was going to die or be retarded, so they left, they just left me there.
I've suffered with some sort of medical fucking bullshit my whole life now, enough.
Enough!

My pre-surgical consult went well, as well as these things can go anyway.
The surgery is about 6 hours long, 4 day stay is accurate unless there are complications, and I will lose about 90% of the mobility in my neck and shoulders.
No left/right turning of my head, my shoulders will also be fixed.
He's doing a full laminectomny, no new disc installation, but he will be installing new titanium rods from C2 to meet up with the top of my current fusion at T3.
He says the new rods will just hook on to the top of those rods kind of like tinker toys.
That they just attach a piece, and slide the new rod in, and twist to lock it in place.
After this, I will be permanently fused from C2-S1.
That's a huge fusion,

They will be shaving my hair off from the base of my skull down.
I have a lot of hair, so he has to do it, and it will grow back.
I keep telling myself it will grow back, it's just hair.
But I love my hair. *sad face*

He thinks I have something called Riley Day Syndrome.
I don't fit all of the criteria for it, but a good number of the symptoms.
I've never had a seizure to my knowledge, and I do feel pain, believe me, I feel pain, but I do have the low muscle tone, the bowel issues, the smooth tongue, high blood pressure, excessive sweating which gets worse when I eat, and when I do vomit, it lasts for awhile, and will go on for hours.
# Irritability # Insomnia # Worsening of muscle tone
Those are things which have gotten progressively worse over the years, I have very bad muscle tone in my lower legs and feet, I have an unsteady gait etc etc.
I suppose that after surgery, I should probably see about having this test to find out if that's what this all is.
I'm adopted so the whole Eastern European Jewish ancestry thing is a possibility.
It would possibly explain the amount of body hair I have too.
"With advances in diagnosis and treatment, survival continues to improve. Currently, a newborn with Riley-Day has a 50% chance of reaching age 30."
Well I beat that part of this eh?

Anyway, it's going on as scheduled, just my physical tomorrow, hoping Dr. Ford clears me because the more Doc Moreno talks about this and keeps repeating the whole "sudden death" thing, the more anxious I'm getting.
If she doesn't clear me tomorrow, I may have to kill her.
Then Thursday, I have the actual surgical testing, ekg, blood work ups, heart tests, neck brace fitting, and the signing of the papers, Will and DNR.
Then Friday, the mammogram and then Monday, surgery.

But right now, I need to get something to eat.
It was a long day and I'm wicked way hungry.

I know that my upcoming surgery, the laminectomy and new rod installation, is not going to be any where near as bad as my previous spine fusion, but surgery is surgery, and I'll still be subjected to all of the needles, tubes, and catheters, pulse oximeter readings, and all of the daily swallowing of antibiotics and stool softeners as I was before.

When I was getting my blood drawn for my labs yesterday, the guy was surprised by how calm I was about it.
He told me to take a deep breath and look away, I didn't.
I just watched him insert it, start the draw, change the vial, fill, change to the next vial, and then even helped him pull the needle and hold the cotton, remove the tourniquet, and put on the band-aid.
Mindy was sitting right outside the room laughing because the guy was all "most people hate needles", and I'm all dude, I've had so many needles and stuff in me, I could probably do it myself.
I told him the only thing I don't like is the central picc, I freaking hate that one.
They have to place those in during the surgery, and it's usually in there until they remove the breathing tube.
I hate that one because it's very uncomfortable, even though I'm usually doped up really bad, I can still feel it in there, it feels stiff and hard, like if you were to turn your head, it would snap in half or something, or poke through the other side of your jugular and kill you.

Ha!
I just said turn your head, something I won't be doing anymore after this surgery, so worrying about the picc stabbing through my jugular is not really going to be a worry or a problem.
It's still going to feel stiff and uncomfortable, but at least I won't have to worry about turning my head and killing myself. *LoLz*

And I need to remember to tell them, or remember to tell my sister to tell them, not to give me so many damn stool softeners this time.
They gave them to me like 3 times a day every day, and my body does not need that many.
After being on opiate pain relievers all of these years, I know all too well about the whole constipation thing that happens because of them, and I've somehow trained my body to "go" after just one stool softener per day, every other day.
If they give them to me in that large of doses while I'm there, we're going to have a bit of a messy going problem if you know what I mean.
I have a really good relationship with my meds and my bowels these days, I know exactly how many poop pills to take to get things moving along just fine.

I just got a call from Doc Moreno's office, they had to ask me a few questions, and then I asked about how long I'll be in the hospital.
Doc Cramer put me on hold, and when he came back, he said 4 days.
Only 4 days!
W00t!

Cindy called, the surgery will be September 8th at St. Joseph's in Tampa, it will be about 6 hours.
I will have to go and get the pre-surgery physical, not self blood donations, it can just be done.

I haven't been feeling well today, woke up to puking, I'm tired today, just not feeling right at all.
No clue what it is, but I'm hoping I'll feel better later.

I got the news today that I didn't want to hear, but I'm greatful for it.
How can I possibly be greatful to be having another major surgery?!
Because if I don't have it, I will die.

My vertebrae are closing in on the spinal cord in my neck, they are compressing it, and if I don't have have this surgery, not only is paralysis possible, but sudden death is a definite.
I will just stop breathing one day he said.
My jaw nearly hit the floor, but he said he can fix this, he can fix me, and he guarantees me that I will be fine.
The chances of anything at all going wrong, paralysis or death, are less than 1%.
He has done this surgery many, many times he said, and he's never lost a patient, and he's never had a patient become paralyzed.
As a matter of fact, he's never had either happen to any single patient in all the years he's been a surgeon, so I have complete trust in him that I will be ok.

The only thing I will lose is my ability to turn my head in either direction.
I can live with that.
I mean, if given the choice between turning your head or sudden death?
I think anyone would take never being able to turn their head again.

The teens are of course, scared, but I have complete trust in my surgeon and I know that everything will be ok.
Mindy and her husband have opened their home to the teens when I have it done, they will have a place to stay, people who will care for them like they are their own, and I will make all the necessary arrangements before I go.

Doc Moreno's nurse Cindy, will be calling me with all the info, what to expect, the date, all of that, it has to be done very soon.
This is a very serious situation, and it has nothing to do with my spine fusion.
This is all congenital.
These are all abnormalities that I was born with, no one ever knew they were there though.
Doc Riegel is actually the one who caught this, he is the one who spotted that something didn't look right in my neck MRIs, he's the one who insisted I see Doc Moreno right away, so when I see him on Friday, I owe him a huge thank you.
He actually saved my life.
If he had not seen this problem, I would have just stopped breathing one of these days, so I kind of owe him my life.

I'm ok, I've just accepted that this has to be done, there is no other choice but a full laminectomy of the vertebrae from C1-C6, I will be permanently fused after this, from the base of my skull to my tail bone.
Kind of amazing, I will be fused the full lentgh of my spine.

After Cindy calls, I'll know more. I'll know when this will be happening, I'll know how long I'll be gone, all of that, and I will keep everyone updated.
I know that I am in the best surgical hands possible, I know that everything will be ok, and when I know more, I'll share it with all of you.

Later days.

I know it's kind of funny, but if I do have to get the neck fusion surgery, (Yes, it's on my mind a lot because my appointment with my surgeon is on Tuesday) I may actually buy a pack of adult diapers, because I recall laying in my bed when I came home and having to go pee, but first I'd have to put on the back brace, make sure it was on snug and secure, then get my cane, and try to get to the bathroom on time, and sometimes I'd barely make it in there, especially in the middle of the night when the teens weren't awake to help me get the brace on. I don't want to have any accidents or even a close call like last time...LOL Here is that picture I was talking about on My Single Mom Life. We had just moved here, this picture was taken in June 1997, so 11 years ago. It was a few years before the pain in my back got so bad that I had to quit working, but seeing this picture, it stopped me in my tracks. I knew that when I bent over to touch my toes and stuff, that my shoulder/rib hump was clearly visible, but I had no idea that the lower S-curve hump was so visible. june9703.jpg I thought I did a fairly decent job of hiding my scoliosis humps, but I guess not. ====================