Just one more thing

I have been working on getting everything in order for my upcoming hip replacement surgery. Some of that effort includes  completing all my PM's (preventive maintenance)  for work before I am out so that my co-workers aren't stuck doing it. I am also getting my house ready . . . I bought myself a recliner which is uber comfortable  and got an "Assist Tray" which connects under the edge of the recliner and has a handle to hold on to when standing up, as well as a lap tray that rotates 360 degrees. So the living room is ready for me to be gimping around.

I got my new crutches a couple of weeks ago and they are super cool and will be super comfy if I need to be on them long term. After seeing these marvelous inventions I can't imagine ever trying to use a standard style of crutch again. I discovered them online when researching crutches, yes it is an odd thing to research, however I was hearing stories about people having to be on crutches for months at a time and I knew that with my torn rotator cuff and bone spur in my shoulder I would NOT be able to manage traditional crutches. Here is a link to the crutches.

http://www.mobilegs.com/index.cfm

I rearranged my bedroom so that getting in and out of bed after surgery should be fairly easy. I also installed a couple of safety bars in the bathroom, one on the side of the tub and the other on the wall. I have added a shower chair, hand held shower and non skid mat to the tub. So safety is taken care of now one more step in the process. 
 



I went on Thursday 11/8/12 to Carepoint East for my pre-Admission testing. In my discussions about past medical history I told the PA that I had Pericarditis when I was 12. The physician who came in to check me out was concerned and wanted to know when my last Echocardiogram was, I thought it was at the very least 10 years prior and once the doc left the room I placed a call to my Cardiologist and confirmed that yep it was exactly ten years earlier. She sent me out to the hospital to get an Echo and chest xray. 

I of course can not do any thing NORMAL and had some problems during the Echo exam. To do an Echo the patient is positioned on the left side, this places the heart closest to the chest wall and provides the technician and physician with the best possible pictures of the heart. Unfortunately my left hip is the one I am having replaced so I had to lay on that hip the entire time. Needless to say it was extremely painful and I laid there crying the whole time. The technician asked me to stick around after my chest xray because there was something in the exam that had concerned her and she wanted to show it to a cardiologist immediately.

So I went out and had the xray and was returning to the waiting room when the echo tech found me in the hall and asked me to come back to her exam room. She asked me to sit down and the proceeded to tell me that during my Echo exam my heart rate had dropped into the 30's on three separate occasions and I also had some heart wall problem. The cardiologist wanted me to go immediately to the Emergency Department and sign in because he felt that I had, had or was having a heart attack. 

Of course this information was NOT what I was expecting to hear and I was completely shocked. Tammy the Echo tech walked with me to the ED and waited while they signed me in and took me into triage. She kept saying she had never had this happen before and she was as surprised  as I was over the results of my echo. 
I had a EKG done in triage and was taken to a room in the ED where I was installed in one of the lovely hospital gowns and nurses and doc's began coming and going. My veins do not cooperate with needle sticks and they had a heck of a time drawing blood for tests. They had a little trouble getting my IV port installed but that at least worked. What little blood the did draw ended up clotting and they had to re-stick me for new samples. 

I spent about two hours in the ED getting checked out and then was informed that I was going to be admitted for observation. I was transferred to East Tower 6 around 5PM. I had contacted my mother and my boys and they all drove up to Columbus to see me and make sure I was still alive! They arrived just as I was being rolled down the hallway to go to the unit. I think they were relieved to see I was ok and they stayed until 8PM. Then made the drive back to Dayton.


The night was uneventful and I slept fairly well in the hospital bed, which could actually be positioned to make my hip hurt less (such a lovely thing). And all the rooms at The Wexner Medical Center at the Ohio State University East Campus are private and cozy. The building itself is showing its age but I got WONDERFUL care and I would much rather have good care than be in a facility that looks pristine! Every person I encountered there was friendly and concerned about what was happening. I am very pleased with how attentive the cardiac team was to me and how quickly they assessed the situation and made recommendations.

I was laying in bed dozing on Friday and the nurse came in and asked me how I was feeling, had I been laying there for a while or had I been up. I answered that I had been dozing off and asked why and she told me that my heart rate had dropped again. This time it had dropped to 39 and she called the cardiology team back to the floor. Less than 5 minutes later the Medical student came back in and asked what I had been doing and told me that my rate had dropped again. One of the thoughts when going home was to run a holter monitor for a month. Nothing ever came of that idea though and I was discharged a couple of hours later with no holter monitor. 
The PCA Alice walked with me to the door of the hospital (no wheelchair apparently they don't do that any more).  I ended up running down to the pharmacy and getting my prescription filled and over to medical records to fill out a form to get copies of my records. 
The drive back to Dayton was a bit nerve wracking. . . I stopped a couple of times just to take a break from the stress and still I was exhausted by the time I got home. On the drive I called and scheduled an appointment with my cardiologist Dr. Tim Markus for Thursday and an appointment with my dentist for Tuesday. It turns out I need to get Dental clearance as well before having a hip replacement. Luckily they had an opening this week so I am going to get it all taken care of although I forgot to ask about antibiotics for dental cleanings so I will need to call on Monday. 


My job requires that I keep loaner bedside patient monitors on hand so I decided that if I could get some electrodes I would hook myself up over night to verify that my heart was not dropping for no reason. I could not find any electrodes so tried to tape the leads to my body. Unfortunately that did not work. My physician left me some of the kind they use in his office in an envelope on the door, but they are not the right kind either. I was able to use the gel as my conductor with the leads and tape to get a decent signal for a little while. My mom checked with people from her church choir, which is filled with hospital workers, but ended up calling the ED at the local hospital and asking if she could get some electrodes. They gave her a few and I was able to have the bedside monitor on all night watching what my heart was doing. I was also checking my blood pressure every few hours. It had gotten really high in the ED on Thursday (187/109) so I was very worried. My overnight results remained good though my lowest HR was 63 and my BP was in a reasonable range. No strange low drops which was great news.
Here is a picture of the monitor in use... my Iphone 4 takes awful pictures!!!


So I am back on the monitor for the night and will keep monitoring the situation until I get clearance from my doc!
Peace out
 

Guilt~ it's not just for the Catholics

I am six weeks away from having my hip replacement and I have been struggling with feelings of guilt over having the opportunity to get my hip fixed. I realize it is illogical to feel guilty but here is the way my brain is working.

I was just diagnosed last year with PVNS and have only had one surgery to clean out the joint and correct the problems. Because the PVNS is so destructive I know I will definitely need the replacement but I hear so many stories of the struggles others have gone through and I feel like I haven't "paid my dues" does that make any sense?

I should re-frame the self talk and accept that I have a surgeon who recognizes that it will be financially beneficial to the Insurance company and me to NOT have repeat arthroscopys for this damaging disease. In the long run having the replacement which should run about 60K will be less expensive than enduring 3 or 4 more arthroscopys at 46K each.

Not to mention the wear and tear on my body going through multiple trips under anesthesia and the 6 to 8 weeks of recovery for each scope. Time off work and extra weight that I am sure I will gain by not being able to move properly. Shoot I gained 15 lbs after my broken ankle in July.

So I KNOW I need it but I am concerned that Insurance at the last minute will say NO and will insist that they do another scope. I am already on the Surgeons schedule for 12/4/12 and when I chatted with his secretary I learned that they don't work on the pre-certification until the month before so there is a bit more time for them to reject me. And if that happens I will have to wait several more weeks to be added to his schedule for his scope day since he has specific days set aside for scopes and others for replacements.

Here is the reality of how my hip is working now. Some parts of the day I can walk with out a limp but as the day progresses I am swaying like a Weeble (remember the Weebles that wobble but don't fall down?).

 Sitting in the van all day exacerbates the pain and limping and I end up coming home and getting right into my pj's and going to bed with either my frozen popcorn pack or my heating pad. I have tried several soaks in the tub with Epsom salts and did not see any improvement. I am taking Tylenol #3 for pain management and feel as though I am eating them like candy when in reality I am taking 1 every 6 hours and I am allowed to have 1-2 every 4 hours, so I am not using as many as I could. I also am taking 15 mg of Mobic once a day which I am still not sure if it is helping or not, however I am not willing to forgo it just to make sure!

Sleep continues to elude me I lay down and try to sleep and can't get comfortable. I can't lay on my left side because of my hip and I can't lay on my right side because of my shoulder (torn rotator cuff and bone spur) which I need to get fixed as well. This leaves me with 2 options on my back propped up and surrounded by pillows, or in a modified stomach position. Neither of them are comfortable for long periods of time and I generally get 2 hours of sleep before waking up and changing positions, walking around, taking med's, watching TV. etc for the next 2-3 hours before I can go back to sleep.

On the up side my ankle improves every day and my Orthopedic Foot and Ankle Surgeon  Dr. Lee has cleared me and I am allowed to return to normal activities. So I started going back to the pool and walking in the water. My ankle is still not strong enough for actual lap swimming so I am building it back up by practicing kicking at the steps and doing one or two lengths with a kick board.  I made it to the pool on M and W the first 2 weeks and this week I did M,W,F. I also started to walk the dogs again but have kept it to 1-2 laps around the block. My older dog who is also having hip problems can't do more than one lap and if I try to go further with him I end up having to pick him up (all 49lbs) of him and carry him home. NOT fun.

So my goal for the next 6 weeks is to continue to rebuild the ankle strength by swimming and walking and hopefully drop a few of those 15 extra pounds that I gained after breaking my ankle. All in hopes that when I do have my surgery I can haul myself around on my crutches.

Speaking of crutches I just ordered my new pair of crutches I can't wait to see if they are as AWESOME as they look!

 http://www.mobilegs.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.products_mobiultra


These are so cool they are ergonomically correct and the shoulder saddle is mobile so it moves with your shoulder rather than rubbing against it.  We shall see!

PVNS study

Novartis is doing a clinical trial of a new medication for PVNS ... MCS110. Here is a link to the study.

http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01643850

Long time gone

Hello again, 
I have not been in the mood to stop and write for quite a while. I have finally gotten out of the cast and out of the boot which were supporting my broken ankle (evulsion fracture). And I have had three PT appointments and my ankle is healing fairly well. I am still not supposed to be doing a lot of walking and swimming laps is still out. Both of these being missing in my world have caused me to gain 15 lbs since the ankle break. I am VERY fluffy now! YUCK!
I am sure that once I can swim again I will be able to drop the weight but it is frustrating none the less. 

I have even been delinquent in my duties to the PVNS organization that we are starting. Although with school starting everyone else has been preoccupied also. I will be getting back to it this week while I am on vacation!

Speaking of vacation I booked the last two weeks of September as vacation time. . . even though I was not planning a trip I have all this time I must use up. So I completely forgot and booked work for Monday and Tuesday this past week which ended up causing me to work the entire week. I was so frustrated and upset on Thursday that I was in tears at a hospital where I was working. This is never good. But climbing up and down from the floor was hurting my hip and the boards I got from the factory did not work for the second day in a row and I had a melt down. 

Thankfully the set of boards that I got on Friday worked and I was able to get the Anesthesia machine calibrated and tested and in working order. I told the office that I was turning off the phone and running away this week. I called a friend from Toronto to see about going for a visit but I don't think that will work. 



I am dog sitting a 120 lb Bull Mastiff for a friend who is in the nursing home doing rehab after having had her neck fused. When I was leaving the hospital yesterday my younger son who is staying at my house to help care for the dog, texted to tell me that he (the dog) was being bad. I later learned that the dog had gotten in to his (Dan's) back pack and eaten something. Well at midnight I learned that the dumb animal ate several packs of food...packaging and all. All of which he puked on the floors of my house. So at 1 AM I was dashing to Walmart to get a carpet cleaner machine. Damn dog!
So with a stupid beast in the house and a son who doesn't think it is a big deal that the dog ate this stuff I can't leave the two alone in my house for a few days!
 

UGH! Calgon take me away!!!