Turned a Corner

I feel as though last week I finally turned a corner. I'm able to take care of Keely around the house during the day. Though we seem to be late to everything these days because getting ready is mostly in Keely's control. I dress and change her in her bed and she always lays down as far from me as possible and asks "How bout here?" and when I say, no that's too far, she'll move like 2 inches closer and ask again. It's a serious test of my thin patience, but I think I'm getting better at it.

On Thursday I went to see my neurosurgeon for my first check up and a set of X-rays. First, I really wish I'd taken a camera and taken a picture of the X-rays. The anterior (from my chest in) view clearly shows ALL of the hardware. The CT picture in my previous post below only show a small portion. There are two large rods on either side of my spine and ~12 screws holding those rods into place. I have no idea how big the screws really are but they looked GIANT to me. I spent all night wondering how they weren't poking holes in my lungs!

The doc said everything looked excellent on my X-rays. No signs of bone fusing yet, but not really any signs expected at 7 weeks. He was looking for stabilization of the hardware at this point. He said he thinks that the hardware is about 70% stabilized. Once the rods and screws are set firmly in place I believe nothing short of another trauma would disrupt the fusion. I asked about restrictions and starting to exercise and picking up Keely, etc and he said he would like me to stay on the same restrictions (including brace wearing) for the next 6 weeks until I go back for my 3 month post-op. He told me that at one point in my surgery he'd removed the vertebrae and disconnected some ribs from my spine and there was a hole in my spine. Just a big gap. So he wanted to be extra careful with me and not take any chances. I told him that made me want to puke on his shoes just a little bit.

Overall, we talked about my pain management (I'm down to Tylenol all day and one dose of hydrocodone and valium to sleep). He was really impressed and said that he thinks I'm recovering much faster than expected and than the average.

My scar is looking much better and I thought you may like to see how to looks now, post staples, instead of having the previous, kind of scary, image stuck in your heads.

Creative Counting

Keely's current obsession is with baby dolls, including her foam dinosaurs, elmos, and bunnies. Last night while I was working in our bedroom she brought in ALL of her babies and lined them up along the edge of the bed. She kept telling me "Shhhh. Babies Night-night". Then she brought in a plastic toy smurf (yes, a McDonalds's happy meal toy) and said "smurf crying". When I asked why the smurf was crying she said because "he has to go night-night". Because of COURSE going to bed = tears. (It has here recently.) Then I asked how many babies she had and she counted 1-9 perfectly. Though I don't know that it actually correlated with the babies. When I asked what came after 9, she picked up the baby on the end (stuffed Elmo) and shouted "ELMO!"

Surgery Update

It's been a month since my surgery (1/3 of the way through recovery!). I'm feeling better and I'm way down on the amount of narcotics I'm taking (one hydrocodone every 5-6 hours). The pain is still there and is still bad, but its manageable. I've done it before. We're about back to the level of pain I went back to work with post-accident. I KNOW I can suck this up. Last week I was really depressed and had several freak out moments but my mom came for most of this week because I JUST did not feel ready to be home alone with Keely. I practiced today changing diapers and doing most of that stuff and managed to do it. Keely was thankfully more or less helpful. I'm worried about next week because I still can't drive and Keely is going to go CRAZY stuck in the house with me all day. I'm just going to send out a plea to mommy friends and ask them to come over and play in the mornings a couple of times a week, just to keep her sane!