scoliosis | jmgoyder

Surreal

by jmgoyder

I’m back in Perth and Son has now been transferred to the hospital’s rehabilitation campus and today, for the first time, I saw him walk. Yes, indeed, we had an exhilarating stroll down to the toilets and back after which he was absolutely exhausted and had to lie down again. He had a craving for gravy and chips (yuck!) so I went and got him some from the cafeteria.

The grimace on his face is partly pain but mostly irritation at having his photo taken. This irritation with me is very encouraging as it means he is getting back to normal! On the phone the other day, he said, “Mum, do have to ring me all the time? You are really hard work. I just want to have a little nap.” Brat!

The surreal thing is this: walking down the corridor with him, I was disconcerted by his height-gain. He was already taller, but now he towers over me – really, really weird!

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Tragi-comic

by jmgoyder

When something is funny but not funny, I think it falls into the category of slapstick, or black, comedy. Like this poor little pigeon outside the hospital, in amongst all the rubbish of urban, but having a ball!

Yesterday, when I left the hospital to come home to the farm, Son was still pretty ‘out of it’ and unable to move or eat. My mother took over staying with him and rang me later to say that he was like Lazarus in the afternoon and the physiotherapists and pain team were able to wind the bed up so he was nearly sitting up. He gobbled his lunch and didn’t vomit so all was going very well.

Late this morning, however, I found out that in the middle of the night he’d hallucinated. Here is a paraphrase of what Son told me on the phone:

“Oh Mum, I thought I was in a disco, so I got up and pulled all of my tubes out and went to the toilet, then I was doing this shaking dance move, then they rescued me but I didn’t get the pain button back for three hours so I wanted to die and what if I’ve ruined the operation?”

According to the nurses, all is well despite the incident but hell! I am now WAITING for the doctor who was called in to ring me – argh.

A friend rang yesterday afternoon, before Son’s midnight adventure, and I said, “I can’t believe I have a husband in a nursing home on my left and a son in hospital on my right, and they are both neurologically challenged and 200 kilometres apart!”

She said, “Are you okay?” and I said, “Yeah, I feel like I’m in one of those weird comedies!” and she said, “That’s a good way of looking at it.”

I mean crying gets really boring after awhile, so I’ve discovered bellylaughing; it’s much better for the soul – hehe!

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Recovery

by jmgoyder

This is Son in ICU (Intensive Care Unit). Since then he has been moved to a ward but is in a single room where he will stay for three days due to some infection risk or something. He is starving, having eaten nothing for over 48 hours but he can’t eat yet because he keeps vomiting from the morphine. I stayed for a few hours and he had a couple of visitors but after they left he started to cry and my maternal presence just made it worse so he asked me to go, so here I am back at the hotel hoping he has gone to sleep for the night, hoping that the nurses will adore him, hoping that we have done the right thing, hoping that tomorrow will come quickly and I can see him again.

I subscribe to a blog by a beautiful woman who had the same operation and her description below says it all:

http://thecurvyspine.wordpress.com/

I don’t think Son and I were quite prepared for this! So far, I have restrained myself from crying but I have made an appointment with my tears for exactly 8.15pm with a 15-minute limit, then I’ll watch another hotel movie….

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Waiting

by jmgoyder

Son, Husband and I have spent a lot of time in various doctors’ waiting rooms over the last year or so, waiting and waiting and WAITING.

I can’t stand waiting. If I am meeting someone for lunch or something and they are late, I get cross; if I am heading for traffic lights and they turn from green to orange, I race ahead because red lights make me see red, especially when the red takes a century to turn green; if I ask Son to do a chore and he says, “just give me a minute”, I want to strangle him; if I am on the freeway and I get stuck behind one of those ~~morons~~ drivers who is in the passing lane but doesn’t pass the the driver in the slow lane, grrrrr … well, you get the picture.

So yesterday, while I waited for Son’s operation to be over with and for the hospital to ring me, the waiting nearly killed me. All of the seconds became minutes and all of the minutes became hours and all of the hours became days. I watched two videos in my hotel room (but I can’t remember what they were about); I went for walks around the city with my mobile phone clutched in my shirt pocket against my heart; I came back to the hotel and ate and drank everything from the minibar; I made a million phonecalls to tell people I was still waiting; I had three showers and two naps; I blogged; I read all of the magazines in the hotel room, so now I am an expert in Perth fashion; I rang the hospital five times; I rang Husband five times … well, you get the picture.

Since Son is still in ICU, I am staying in Perth for one more night and good friends are checking on animals for me. I’m sure Godfrey will be waiting too, with great anticipation, for my return. After all, it’s been nearly three days since he’s been able to do his favourite thing which is to bite me. Wait away, Godfrey!

And now I’m off to the hospital again (hotel is only two blocks away) to see Son and wait for his transfer from ICU to a ward. I have been told that this will happen some time after 4pm so I anticipate some more waiting – mmmmmmm!

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The long and short of it

by jmgoyder

I am well aware that my posts have become rather sloppily sentimental and even solipistic lately (and I hate solipsism!) I’m also very, very aware that Husband, Son and I are extremely fortunate in so many ways and that our recent troubles are nothing compared to many other people’s situations. I have wanted to say that for some time.

Son’s scoliosis surgery took over seven hours today and tonight he is the intensive care unit attached to a multitude of tubes. As soon as I was allowed to, I went to see him, but he was too groggy to really know I was there, although when I touched one of his hands, he grabbed it and, with his eyes still closed, and with great difficulty (as if my hand were a boulder), raised it to his lips and kissed it.

One of the things the nurses were doing was measuring his height and joking about how tall he would be now. This was a pre-operative joke too which didn’t really resonate with me until today when I remembered how extremely tall Son used to be. He was over 6 feet when the scoliosis went mad and shrunk him; previous to this he had always been ‘the tall kid’. Here he is pictured with two of his cousins who are both four years older than him. Son is on the left.

Okay, moving on now … tomorrow I will see Son, then go home to the birds. One of the funniest phonecalls I made from this hotel room was to my beautiful mother last night.

Me: I’m really worried.

Mother: Of course you are – this is huge surgery.

Me: No, I’m worried about the birds while I’m away. I left heaps of food and water but….

There was a bit of a pause!

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Valentine’s Day Eve 2012

by jmgoyder

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Growing a spine

by jmgoyder

You know those sayings: ‘he’s got spine’ or ‘she’s spineless’ or ‘grow a spine’? Yeah, well, tomorrow, Son will literally be growing a spine. Here is an animated version of what is going to be done during his scoliosis surgery (don’t worry, there’s no blood!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBIf4AQj5s0

This morning we left home at around 9am to get to the hospital by 11.30am for Son to see the neurologist, who glued electrodes to his head (these will be connected before his surgery tomorrow in order to monitor how his spinal cord is doing during the op.) The electrodes are multi-coloured so he looks very reggae-ish!

Then, because I was parked (twice!) in one hour parking zones, I left Son at the hospital to be admitted and drove to my hotel to check in. As it’s only walking distance from the hospital, I’ll set out in a minute to go back. He’s allowed to go out for dinner so we are meeting our friend, Nathalie at 6pm for a burger. Nat is the one who got me into blogging in the first place. She set me up (in a good way I mean!)

http://theinfinitegame.org/

I just found out I’m not allowed to see Son before his surgery at 8am tomorrow because he’ll be getting prepped much earlier in the morning. Son is okay with this, but I’m not – I just wanted to see him off. Apparently he won’t be ‘see-able’ until around 5pm tomorrow so it’s going to be a long, waiting day in Perth for me.

Son is very up and very positive. That kid has a lot of (metaphorical) spine! He didn’t even baulk when he found out he would have around four surgeons, two anaesthetists, and multiple other specialists involved in the surgery – yikes!

My beautiful, spineful boy!

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Son’s surgery

by jmgoyder

Son used to be a mighty football player and, at one time, he had dreams of playing professionally. The following photos were taken by one of the dads around four years ago.

Even though we knew Son had a scoliosis, it had only ever been visible via X-ray, and not to the naked eye. He was undergoing various treatments for it, and intensive personal training to prevent it from getting worse, so, one day, after a football game, when he took his shirt off, I got a nasty shock to see his crookedness. With a shirt on, you see, it was unnoticeable. A subsequent X-ray revealed that the scoliosis had increased dramatically in just a few months to a 73% ‘S’ curve. Thereafter we proceeded with every therapy possible while we awaited his first appointment with a spinal surgeon to discuss options.

We were not prepared for the strict advice given. “You will require surgery and will need to quit football immediately – you will never be able to play again,” said the doctor. “This is your spine,” he continued, showing Son the latest X-ray which I hadn’t had the guts to show him myself. After that, the doctor left the room briefly to allow us some space to absorb this verdict. My heart cracked as Son sobbed and sobbed and I wanted to kill the doctor for his abruptness, only realizing later that there was probably no other way of saying it.

This is the latest MRI of Son’s spine. Its curve had increased to nearly 75% in just a few months. I took the photos against the veranda window, so they’re not works of art!

Husband, Son and I have all come full circle in the sense that, instead of resisting the idea of surgery, we now embrace it and Son cannot wait! After all, now that his spine is causing him discomfort (pain and no stamina) and is squishing one lung and one kidney, we have come to accept that there is no choice any more. And we are so lucky to be living in a country where this surgery is available, with one of the best surgeons in Australia.

I am grateful, fearful and excited. Son will be okay. He even said, “Mum, just drop me off at the hospital and go home again; I’ll be fine.”

No way! I am going to have two nights in a luxury motel near the hospital so I can come and go and be close by.

Roll on next Tuesday – how weird that Son’s day of surgery is Valentine’s Day – good omen, I reckon!

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Buttons is dead

by jmgoyder

Son and I just got home (it’s nearly 6pm in Western Australia) from our second day of medical appointments in Perth, to find Buttons, the weiro, dead in the toilet. As Buttons has always had plenty of water, he has never ventured into this tiny room at the end of the enclosed veranda before (the door to which is usually shut anyway – oh why did I leave it open today?)

I should have put him in his cage for the day. I should have closed the door to this little bathroom he’s never ventured into. I’m an idiot and absolutely grief-stricken by the loss of this tiniest of all our birds – but a bird with the biggest personality.

This is one of the hardest things about having birds, watching birds and loving birds – the inevitability of loss, because of their vulnerability and unpredictability. I am beginning to wonder how, and why, the incredible (and mutual) joy of the birds has been punctuated by grief over and over again for me, for us.

Yesterday and today, Son and I learned some scary things about his scoliosis surgery on the 14th. The nurse, physiotherapist, doctor, aneasthetist, respiratory specialist, radiologist etc. etc. filled us in on some of the minor details the surgeon hadn’t mentioned. For example, he will need bone from the bone bank, blood from the blood bank, his 74% curve can’t be surgically corrected to equal perfectly straight, the pain will be severe for two or three days, he might have to go into another hospital for rehab., there is a slight risk of paralysis etc. etc. All of this is fine with Son who can’t wait to be straightened but, for me, the fear lurks behind the anticipation of Son being ‘fixed’.

Son just rang Husband in the nursing lodge to tell him about our appointments today, and about Buttons.

I am going outside to put the gang away.

Wings

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Son feeds the birds!

by jmgoyder

Son and I got home this afternoon from a 5-hour round trip to Perth and back and, despite his disapproval of my ‘bird thing’, Son fed the gang and didn’t mind at all!