Dad and I went to see the surgeon on Monday, who informed me that I needed an operation to take out the disc herniation. He said it's something he would like to do as soon as possible. He was planning on taking a long weekend, taking Thursday and Friday off this week. When he saw my MRI, he decided he would come in and work a little bit on Thursday. It's pretty bad. His nurse kept referring to it as "HUGE". There was a project that I needed to do, and really wanted to do on the week of the 18th in Kentucky. I tried to talk the surgeon into waiting a few weeks to operate on me. He kind of laughed. He explained that with a herniation that big I will soon have to worry about becoming more weak in my left leg (the weaker it gets, the harder it is to recover), and losing complete feeling in my left foot...which is already numb on the left side. He also explained that the longer I wait, the more risk I have of being incontenent. At that point (actually it still took me a minute, because I want to do that project and Dad was looking at me like "Are you nuts?!"), I said.... "Um, Thursday it is!"
This is the closest photo of a disc herniation that compares to mine. Toward the bottom of the photo, you'll see a little dark section that is sort of spilling out of the vertebrae...that is a herniated disc. Mine is actually larger than this one, as it pushes the nerve into the spinal canal. I think this stuff is really cool...I find it really interesting.
It is an outpatient surgery, which will give me instant relief from the pain in my leg. The procedure will only take an hour or so, with about two hours in recovery at the hospital. I am expected to spend the following two weeks doing very little. I'm told it takes a month to heal, but after two weeks I could start driving. After the procedure, my leg won't have any pain, but my back will be in more pain than normal for awhile.
The surgeon won't take out the entire disc, so he said there is a possibility that the same disc will rupture again. I also have about three bulging discs that cause back pain, and he mentioned his concern about those. For someone who is 24, to already be having back surgery, it could be a very exciting future ahead of me! I'm excited about the pain relief. I'm just really anxious about the whole waking up part after the surgery! If I do wake up, I am going to make the necessary adjustments to my lifestyle so that I never have to go through this again. Or, at least not any time soon.
After the appointment with my surgeon, since my surgery was in a few days, we went ahead and ran over to St. Vincent's to do all of my pre-op tests. I didn't really have an appointment, only gave them 10 minutes notice, so I had to wait awhile for people to get to me. They did an EKG and took a few viles of blood. I think the nurse that did all of this could sense that I was pretty freaked out. She talked me through what was going to happen that morning and explained a lot of things to me. Her sister-in-law had the same thing done last year and said she gets along just great now. She was sweet to me, even though I could tell she was having a rough day.....
But I am excited about one thing......... They are going to write "YES" on the surgical site. You may not think this is great, but I do! The surgical site is basically the top inch of my butt crack. How HILARIOUS is that?! HAHAHA....awesome. I'm hoping I can talk the prep-nurse into taking a picture of it for me. :)
I know that all this is probably not a big deal. I mean, I'm going to look back at it in a year and think it was just something that happened to me...an experience. But right now, it seems like a huge deal to me. I have to be a little dramatic, you know.
Thanks for listening, everyone. I will blog again sometime after Thursday and let you know how everything went.
PS. To my fellow bloggers out there - are you guys having trouble posting pictures and videos? I changed the setting to the Old Posting Editor and it's still weird. I don't even have the option of posting a picture or video in the Updated Posting Editor. Any ideas?
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