Well, let's see if my fingers and my brain are a bit more coordinated this evening. They certainly haven't been up to this point! I've tried various times to write in my blog, but it just has NOT worked!
On Friday, October 16th I had a Posterior Lumbar Interbody Fusion. I was in the Operating Room at Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane a little over five hours... (Part of the soreness I am currently having is across the front of my body when the various portions of me rested facedown for this long spell on this fancy table with its cutouts for body parts.) Basically Dr. Powers made an incision atop my lower spine, inserted wire cages to hold apart the vertebrae of lumbar 4 and lumbar 5, then fused them together with sacral 1. Next he put titanium rods from L4, L5 and S1, holding it all together. Then he harvested bone marrow from my hip bone used it to "paint" over the whole contraption in order to promote new bone growth.
I've stuck in a couple of pictures at the end of this blog that show what it looks like. If you've a squeamish stomach, you may not what to look there!
I came home to Auntie Violet on Monday afternoon with some pretty potent pain meds I'm taking every three hours. It's been tough trying to keep the pain under control without becoming so zonked I can't walk or talk.
The stitches are almost internal -- what you see on the outside are steri strips which will gradually peel off.
Can't seem to keep my eyes open -- guess I better quite while I'm ahead.
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