As you can see from he picture I'm up and running, on a cane now. Or as I fondly refer to myself, The Tripod. Here we're in Mexico takin a breather...
The past month has been nothing short of eventful. I'll start at the beginning to make thing chronologically clearer for everyone. After leaving the hospital in March I didn't think i would be ever going back, but as usual surprises keep rearing up at all points. This particular occasion my family and I were at a wedding party for an old family friend, at the Georgetown (pub in Canmore). Lots of people, boozin, good times all in all. Half way through dinner my chest was hit by some preverbial sledge hammer to the chest (not really but it felt like it), for some reason I couldn't breath. With half a burger in my hand I attempted to regain my breath but every in take of air just lead to a sharp flesh shredding pain to my left lung, at first it felt very much like the feeling I had experienced after collapsing my lung when I was 18. My brother ran off for the wheel chair, at the time I was still hardly mobile, and my dad the car so they could get me to the hospital. Surprise, back in the ringer for another round I thought.
Getting into emerge worked pretty quick and I was managing to keep myself relaxed so that I could get enough air into my system. Entering the Emergency was like entering a high school reunion, every nurse and doctor I new personally from my days not long before. Relaxed and jokingly they greeted me, taking the piss "back already hey Ben?!".
The pain began to subside and the breaths became deeper. The Doc though was very concerned about blood clots, which are deadly and happen to people in my position who have experienced extensive trauma. Back in the ambulance and off to the foothills again, "yeeaa hah" I thought as they wheeled me off the floor.
As usual a 12 hour wait at foothills proceeded, CT scans, X-Rays, the full gammit. Fortunetly no blood clots but no real answers either. They released me a day later.
"What the hell just happened" I thought?
Anyway, time passed had no problems with my lung at all until a couple weeks ago, that story I'll leave for my next post...
Most of you are probably wondering how things are progressing, outside of the occasional unpredicted bout like above the healing has been going as planned, except for the arm.A while back I went into my most recent arm exam with my neuro guy. Nothing is expected at the moment with my radial nerve but n improvement with my muscularcutaneous nerve either. I guess thats what you get from trying close line a 6inch diameter popular going 40 km/h...
So, surgery 13th of May. This is going to be kind of intimidating, its one of those deals where you go under the knife not knowing whether your going to come out with a minor scraping of scar tissue off the nerve and slap on the healing pelvis out the door or come out with calf implants (not sure what these are but I guess they exist). Basically they dont know what to do until they get in there, that means minor surgery of scar tissue removal, nerve grafts, muscle transfers who knows. What I can say is that anything though will be better than the current situ of not being able to bend the arm at all. I'm pretty confident this neuro guy can hook me up with a functional limb...
So thats the arm info, I guess we'll know more after the 13th. The pelvis is healing well, hobling around the cane is no prob. The leg still has a gap between the tibia, so during the same surgery for the arm they are going to add scrapings off my hip and throw them in the leg, otherwise known as a bone graft.
my bone doctor ran me through a pretty good adventure just after I had seen my neurosurgeon. Going to Calgary and I thought I'd be just going in for a routine x-ray and to talk about how my leg and arm were healing. to my surprise, he mentioned that my left leg actually was about a half centimeters longer than my right leg. He stated to me he wanted to take screws out right then and there to see if the left leg would decompress as I start to walk around more. I said "you want to take screws are right now ?". He said, "Yah, its routine". So, he shuffled me into a private room in the cast clinic, busted out his surgical unit injected me with a small amount of freezing into my upper Tapia and cut me open. One hour later, he was still digging around with a screwdriver. And after to much time he began swearing like a construction worker. I told him that "there's only two people to be concerned about swearing around you. one is your helicopter pilot and the second is your doctor. I told them, now I've experienced both what the hell is going on down there?". he looked at me and said, "they gave me the wrong screwdriver", and then walked out into the main lobby and told a nurse that he needed x86 screwdriver stat, I thought to myself, that is the only time I've ever heard that referred to me in a serious sense... I thought construction workers justy do this, Doctors?
30 minutes later he came back with a screwdriver. By that time the freezing and worn off, and have a screwdriver fit and he started turning. I can tell you that it was not a pleasant experience, just another adventure dealing with this whole thing.
I drove home hoping not to get gang green to the wound from our trip to Mexico.
