Tweedle Beetle Tri-Atheletle

In all honesty, I am really looking forward to the surgery... well maybe a better way of saying it is that I am tired of being in pain and ideally, the surgery is going to fix the worst of the pain and hopefully cause less than I have now. This last month has been bloody awful, plagued with sleepless nights, constant fatigue, constant nerve pain, paralysis in my triceps and numbness in my fingers.  I really feel for people who are struggling with cronic pain - without relief it really wears on a person.

My surgery today was bumped up from its original time of 6:00 PM to 3:30.  I need to be at the hospital for preparations by 1:30 and hopefully I will be out by 5:30 PM.  Most likely I will be discharged from the hospital the following day but I am planning on being a "slow" recovery so that I can be pampered for another day so :).

Dr. Keenen, a very experienced neurosurgeon (30 years) and Dr. Tatsumi (a neurosurgeon and an instructor for implantation of artificial disks and has done 100s of these) will be working on me for what should be 1.5 hrs or so.

During my recovery, my beautiful and wonderful wife will be keeping my blog up to date with my recovery status. 

Check back to see how everything goes!

Well,

I am scheduled for a Cervical Disectomy and artificial disk implant on Thursday at 6:00 PM.  I had my pre-opp appointment this morning with the doctor and really feel good about the procedure.  As my current surgeon (Dr. Keenen) has only done 15 of these surgeries, he will be joined by his partner, Dr. Tatsumi (http://www.orspine.com/doctors.html) who has done over 50.  I am hoping that this will help me over the long term to prevent other disk injury which could have been caused by a total vertebrae fusion.

I don't have much time now but wanted to share the following video as a way to describe the procedure.

I am not sure why... but I was totally prepared to schedule a surgery on this herniated disk.  I had come to terms with it and was ready to move forward.  I have to say though, I was taken by surprise when I was told that they would be cutting through my throat to access my spine from the front!  It doesn't take a engineer to figure out the shortest distance between two points is a straight line and if you have two straight lines of different length, it is generally easy to figure out which of those straight lines is the shortest.  Well... where is your spine???  On the the front of your neck? Nope - even I know this one, your spine runs down your back.  It seems logical to me that to get to your spine, you should probably cut through the back not the front!!!

Enough sarcasm, here are the stats on what the Neurosurgeon says:

• Severely herniated disk C6/7
• Disk degeneration C6/7
• Bulging disk C5/6
• Disk degeneration C5/6
• Bone spurs forming on C 5/6/7 (the body's natural way of fusing these joints to protect the spine).

Plan:

• Cervical discectomy and fusion (C5/6 and C67)
  
• Cut into the neck, through the throat to access the spine from the front.
• Remove all of the disk material from C5/6 and C6/7 (maybe - but definitly C6/7)
• Utilize a cadaver bone graph to facilitate bone generation and cervical vertebral fusion.
• Attach a titanium plate to the two vertebrae to support the bone graph.
• Surgery take 1.5 hrs and then overnight stay at the hospital for observation.
• There are lots of good to gruesome videos out there (just Google the Cervical Discectomy and Fusion

Recovery:

• Initially, things won't be fun with 4 or 5 days of local pain (at the surgical site and throat).
• The Nerve pain should be gone but this will be replaced with the surgical pain.
• The doctor suggests getting up and moving around in the first few days anything out of bed will require a C-Collar for neck suport.
  
• For the first 2 weeks - picking up nothing heavier than a cup of coffee.
• For 6 weeks nothing heavier than a milk jug (try this on for size when both of your toddlers are much heavier than a milk jug)
• After the first couple of weeks, I should be able to get back to the gym and sit in the recline (granny) bike and peddle to keep my heart rate up.
• After the first couple of weeks, I will be engaged in controlled physical therapy.
• I should be back in business by 12 weeks (3 months) able to train for all of my endurance sports.
  

I am awaiting the actual surgical scheduling but should know more on Monday.  I will keep you all posted!