Saturday, August 25, 2012

Anniversaries

For just about as long as I can remember, August has been a month for anniversaries.  Many summers ago in a cute Lake Tahoe chapel, carrying a bouquet of blue silk roses I bought her, my mom walked down the aisle to marry the man I'd already taken to calling "dad" and make everything all nice and official.  I immediately began using his last name, proudly, although it would be years later that I made the change legally.

One hot August, while my belly was full and round with my first child, my sister passed away from cancer.  I had the great fortune to have seen her, earlier in my pregnancy, although I had not realized then that it would be the last time.  I certainly never thought that eight years later I'd be embroiled in my own fight with cancer.

A year ago in August, I had my first spine surgery.  And a year ago in August, yesterday and today were the first days I started feeling wobbly, off-balance, and a little bit feeble while walking, and thought I was having a side effect problem from taking Valium.  A year ago tomorrow would be the last day I walked without an assistive device.  By the end of that day, I would be unable to walk at all, and my rehab/physical therapy journey would begin.

Soon that journey will draw to a close.  I have less than twenty therapy visits left, and much has been accomplished.  Yesterday in therapy, using only the two balance canes, I walked first 70 and then 65 feet at a time, and then progressed from two to three minutes at a time spent standing up without any aides, bouncing a ball off a trampoline and catching it.  Hopefully by next August, being disabled will be just another August memory.

2 comments:

  1. I think your information on spine surgery is not sufficient.Can you give more details so that reader can easily understand it.
    Thank you for giving this information.
    Regards:spine surgery in india

    ReplyDelete
  2. More information on my spine surgeries was given in earlier posts at the beginning of my blog, but I can summarize it for you here: my first surgery was in August, a T3 laminectomy with kyphoplasty. There had been a partial collapse of T3 from compression fracture after it was weakened by an oversized hemangioma. Subsequent to that surgery there was further collapse of T3, with bone and cement fragment retropulsion into the spinal canal, causing loss of sensation from T3 down and weakening of the legs until I couldn't walk without a walker. My second spine surgery was in November, to stabilize the collapse. Laminectomies were done on I think two or three more vertebra (I believe T2 plus T4 and T5) and titanium rods affixed to T1-T5 with screws, and synthetic bone cement was used to induce fusion. Significant physical rehab progress was made until the end of December, when malignant tumors growing out of T3 and protruding into the spinal canal from both the right and left damaged the cord and caused further loss of skin sensation from T3 down plus almost total loss of nerve control in both legs.

    ReplyDelete

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