I Got Screwed!

Thank you so much for your concern, everyone who's posted or or e-mailed. I usually think it's pretty funny when people apologize in their blog for not posting in awhile, but now I understand and, so, I am sorry for disappearing like that. I think that, at first, I just got kind of blogged out and couldn't get motivated to write for awhile and was just exhausted from trying to work a crappy part-time job, and then when I finally was getting my shit together to start posting again, the world started conspiring against me and stuff. (Because "the world" doesn't have better shit to do, y'all. It's all about me, you know).

My computer got all jealous that I was going to be in the hospital and decided it wanted to go too. After experiencing steadily declining health all week, it finally conked out for good two days before I went in for traction, and it was admitted to The Apple Computer Hospital for a logicboardectomy and transplant. (It was experiencing rejection from its earlier transplant; this is the third logic board failure it's had in six months. Note: those bastards told me I was lying when I said a previous Apple Genius had said this was a known problem. Well, well, well. I love being right. Assholes). The fine folks at Apple (spit) said it would only a require a day or two's stay, and they even just admitted it locally rather than sending it off to the larger hospital in one of them middle states (where it spent two weeks last spring) so it would go faster, but it suffered complications and remained at SoHo General for a week and a half.

I, meanwhile, nearly died of boredom. I did all 18 logic problems in the Dell Puzzle Book Super Jumbo Logic Problem Edition, reread a lot of books, and watched Big Brother three times a week. I also spent a lot of time freaking out at SoHo General about how they'd better release my Darling Computer NOW. It was finally just given a clean bill of health, having also received a new battery (the original was broken from the time I got the dang thing, and they FINALLY admitted it wasn't just "normal use decline" and gave me a new one) and a new keyboard (it suffered from letterepropsy: most of the letters had rubbed off the original one within the first month or two of DC's life, and the Apple Geniuses had previously claimed that keyboard replacements weren't included in the warranty. I finally got an Apple "Genius" who couldn't type and thus couldn't find the right keys to press, given that they had no letters printed on them, and she agreed to give DC a shiny, new, lettered keyboard). Despite being admonished, "We don't USE the term 'lemon' when talking about computers because that is a word for cars," I have been assured that, should the logic board go out AGAIN, *then* they will finally take this whatever-word-Apple-prefers-to-'lemon' off of life support and replace it with a newborn laptop.

Meanwhile, I too had my little hospital stay (although it was fortunately of much shorter duration than DC's). Thanks to all who've wished me luck and written to ask how things went. I ended up having it done a few days early, on Thursday (the 18th), due to scheduling issues, which actually worked out better for me but made it all a bit of a rush and no one really knew I was going in earlier.

The invasive traction proved to help significantly. For the first time since my surgery 15 months ago, my neck went completely straight and my head resumed its rightful position directly above my body: I looked normal. (Well, as normal as one can look with screws in one's head, I suppose. Although, I guess because my hair covered the screws well and so all you really saw was the mouse-ears-esque foam that cushioned my head from the tongs, the hospital staff all said I looked surprisingly "adorable" in traction. Which is actually a little creepy, imho, but okay. I'll put the pics up if my stepfather ever figures out how to include attachments in e-mail). Although I had been worried that the ability of my neck to straighten would be limited by the hypertrophy of the muscles--even if the spasticity was reduced--it worked just fine and didn't seem to stress the muscles at all. ("I've never seen you look so straight," said the nsg. Which continues to crack me up. Because I'm 12). The constant pain in my neck and head from the spasticity was nearly gone, which was actually kind of weird, as I haven't had a minute without it since my surgery, but I'm sure not complaining.

Oddly enough, my hip pain--which no one has really been able to fully explain but I assumed was more hypermobility-related and wouldn't be helped even if the craniocervical issues were ever completely fixed--was actually greatly reduced as well. I don't really get why (and so have no intention of mentioning this to my skeptical hip doctor who doesn't believe, oh, anything, unless I get more permanent relief from surgery and/or I can find out a credible explanation), but it was awesome. My thoracic and shoulder pain also was greatly reduced, but I didn't much relief in my arm and hand numbness and tingling. Still, I've had that the longest, and so it makes sense to me that the nerves wouldn't be all cool with, "Hey, we're free; let's act like normal nerves again," after just 24 hours; I'm hoping that maybe with some more time being freed, they'd start doing their thing.

Unfortunately, my experience with the traction itself wasn't nearly so positive. One pin didn't hurt too much at all (so, for anyone reading this who might also have invasive traction: I have to assume that the problems I had with the other one are NOT at all typical, so please don't get all freaked out, mkay?). But, the other? Oh, man. I'm really not much of a complainer when it comes to pain, really, I'm not. It took me two days after my decompression to even ask for better pain relief, even though I was having NO effect from the PCA. I can't remember the last time I cried from pain itself. But, this? This was something else. I think the left screw must have just been inserted slightly differently and hitting a nerve or pressing the bone oddly or something, because I have never experienced anything quite like the level of pain I had from it.

We really couldn't get the pain under control. They tried giving me more local anesthetic injections around the pin to numb it: although the other side was still slightly from the procedure hours earlier, the numbness on this side lasted all of five minutes and then promptly wore off, so that wasn't much help. Then, after finally getting some orders for pain relief, they brought me one lousy percocet. Which, of course, is to laugh. Finally, some IV dilaudid, which, once upped to a much higher and more frequent dose, finally at least reduced the pain to a level where I could stop crying and carry on a conversation. The biggest problem was the pain was referring to my jaw, and I could barely open my mouth. I have a somewhat reduced ability to open my jaw due to a combination of TMJ probs, hypermobility issues, and the nearby neck spasticity anyway, but this was ridiculous. My mom brought me some avocado roll sushi for dinner (since, after waiting for my dinner for nearly an hour--I hadn't been allowed to eat since midnight the night before, so I was getting much annoyed--the stupid nurse said the stupid dining service was now closed and I wouldn't be getting any stupid hospital food that night. Of course, within five minutes of my mom's returning with the sushi, a tray showed up with a full dinner. But, sushi trumps hospital veggie stir-fry any day), and I pretty much had to pull off one piece o' rice at a time to fit it in my mouth. Anything more than that, and SCREAM OWIE. I swear, I looked like some feral child, captured from the wilderness after having spent a decade in the company of wild dogs, pulling off tiny bits of avocado and shoving them in my mouth.

The hospital experience only got worse from there. Way too many issues with the night staff to list, but the highlight was that they got the orders for my *usual* meds so messed up that they would only give me half the dose of my usual pain meds the entire time I was there (which they KNEW was wrong but couldn't find anyone to fix until right before I got discharged) and tried to force me to take my usual morning pills--i.e., the ones that keep me AWAKE--at night. Eh, I should have taken them: I never did sleep for a minute, due to the pain, anyway. By morning, I was pretty overtired and more or less lost it when the new shift of nurses came on and they again brought me the wrong meds. They were nice, at least, and definitely tried to help me out, and we had a good time making fun of the crazy loon compulsive liar freak who was my roommate.

I ended up being discharged at barely 24 hours, rather than the planned 48. As the P.A. said, "Our goal here is not to torture you, and you have had a horrible experience and don't need any more." To their credit, the P.A. and nsg seemed genuinely upset that I'd had such a rough time, and I really got the sense that this was NOT a normal or typical experience. As I'd had an unequivocal response to the traction wrt alleviating symptoms, there was little need to continue the test to be sure or anything ("Sign me up!" was my response), so they unscrewed me--which relieved the more severe pin pain immediately (although the OTHER side is now having some healing issues)--and set me free. I'm still having trouble with opening my mouth wide enough for normal-sized bites, but now I just look like I have weird food rituals rather than like I was deprived of human contact for a decade or two. The spasticity is now in overdrive to make up for lost time, and I've been pretty miserable for the past week and a half. Despite my great fears of aesthetic effect, I kind of love the little shaved spots. The Operating Room Barber Guy did a GREAT job of keeping them as small as possible and ensuring they would be well hidden by the rest of my hair, so they're just like these secret little patches that are kind of fun to touch. I probably shouldn't tell people that. Nevermind.

The day after I got released, my sister--having just moved into her and her boyfriend's new condo--got engaged, my older stepbrother also got engaged and announced he and the girlfriend they were getting married in four weeks, and my younger stepbrother and SIL signed on a new house and found out that my SIL--who's however-many-months-pregnant-you-are-when-you-can-find-this-out--found out she was having a girl. And I? I got out of the hospital after being hung by screws in my head for 24 hours and decided to have major surgery this winter. Um, yeah, I went through a few days of wallowing in self-pity. But I got over it, 'cause, HEY, I had LOGIC PROBLEMS to keep me company. And, since I have to buy half the planet engagement presents, I've decided that, for my surgery, I'm gonna register at Crate and Barrel and demand housewares in lieu of flowers.