Surgery and Recovery Blog

BEWARE: Lots of surgery talk, and squeamish subjects/photos.  Don't puke.

3/16/2011 UPDATE: RECENTLY ADDED TUMOR PICTURE! SCROLL TO END TO VIEW!

The Surgery:

On Tuesday morning I had to wake up at 4:00 AM and report to the MD Anderson hospital at 5:15AM.  After signing in, the other surgery patients, myself, and our guests were taken to a room full of beds where we were hooked up to all kinds of monitors and changed into hospital clothes.  At 7:00 AM, they wheeled me back into the surgery room and positioned me on the table.  At that time I was given the anesthesia and don't remember much other than them apologizing for the table being cold.  According to reports, the operation started around 8:20 AM and finished around 12:45 PM which was much quicker than they anticipated.  Originally they thought I could be in there for about 7 hours or more.  Apparently, the procedure itself went very smoothly, none of my nerves or major arteries were damaged and I now have about an 18 in. incision on the outside of my right leg, a dynamic screw and side plate, and one less osteochondroma.

As you can see above, the osteochondroma is gone but I have a permanent giant screw and rod holding the upper half of my femur together.  The osteochondroma measured 18x14x10 cm in size.  There is a picture of the removed tumor but I still have to get it from the doctor so I havent seen it yet myself.

Post Surgery:

I woke back up around 2:00 PM in the patient recovery room.  My mom was there and I was hooked up to even more IVs and monitors than before.  I felt almost completely painless though considering the operation because of the amount of morphine I was taking.

I was more worried about being strangled by tubes at this point.

Unfortunately, the amount of blood loss due to cutting into my bone had caused me to become extremely week.  My heart rate was really high and my breathing was slow.  At around 6:00 PM I felt pretty nauseated and began to pass out.  My resting heart rate hit 139 and set the alarms off while my blood pressure dropped to as low 33/20 before the staff rushed into the room.  They pushed more fluids into my IV and waved ammonia under my nose to get me back to normal.  After the initial scare, everything returned mostly to where it was supposed to be but my blood level was still low.  So instead of having a 3 hour stay in the recovery room, I was there for 7.  Eventually I was assigned a room and wheeled over to it.  My mom spent the night with me in order to keep me company.  If you happen to be in the neighborhood today or tomorrow, I'm in room P423.

Recovery Day 2 (Wed)

By Wednesday morning, I was still pretty weak and having to take a lot of morphine.  It was really hard to talk and move around.   My mom and stepdad were visiting in and out since they work at MD Anderson.  Since I was very weak and pale, my doctors and nurses decided to give me two blood transfusions in order to get my hemoglobin level back up.  My level was at 6.9 while normal range is typically 14-18.  After the transfusions they got my hemoglobin level up to 8.0 which is still low but I had much more energy and was able to get on the computer and phone and update some folks.  My dad and stepmom came by that afternoon too, as well as my youth pastor Josh who came by earlier in the morning while I was still pretty out of it.  Later that evening, my first big step on recovery took place as I was able to get up using a walker, move towards the door, turn around, and sit on a chair.

Carl Fredricksen still has me beat.

Recovery Day 3 (Thurs)

On the third day of recovery, I felt better in the morning but still fairly weak.  The doctors decided I should get one more blood transfusion which brought me up to 9.6, which is as good as I'm gonna get anytime soon.  They also got me off of my morphine pump and onto a new pain killer.  I got up to walk a lap around the hallways using the walker and did well with that.  Later I was able to clean off in the sit-down shower in my room.  As far as regaining my mobility, I'm doing very well.  Unfortunately, I'm still waiting on my bone to stop bleeding which is the main issue that could be keeping me here longer.  The food here is pretty bad, and the internet doesn't work half of the time I try to use it.  It's almost like being back at Olivet actually.



Recovery Day 4 (Fri)


Now that Friday is here, all my doctors are going on their spring breaks (since MD Anderson is affiliated with University of Texas) and I wont be getting much information from them.  However, I'm still here with nurses and physical therapists helping me get back on my feet.  Today, I was able to shower on my own, shave, get dressed and use crutches to do a lap around the hallways.  Phillip will be joining me shortly for an evening full of Pokemon playing.  All day I've been watching the coverage of the Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan.  It's definitely a scary situation for them and it makes mine feel very minor in comparison.
Like I said, I'm hoping I won't be here too much longer.  I'm basically here until my bone stops bleeding which may take a few more days.  After I leave, the doctors expect I will have a pretty long stage of regaining my ability to walk and run and stuff.  As far as I'm concerned, I'm going to try to heal as quickly as I can since I have lots of stuff I want to do this summer.

Also, I'll probably update the blog once I get a couple more pictures loaded and sent to me from the surgeon.  For now, I can just post this picture of the lower half of my incision:

For reference, thats my right arm lying across my chest in the upper 

left part of the picture.  The scar continues up my butt a ways but I

didn't want to post that for obvious reasons.  That red tube leads down

to my bone and is working on draining the blood down there.

Tumor:

I managed to acquire a picture of the tumor outside of my body!

EWWWW.  I'm glad this thing is no longer a resident of my right leg.  As you can see it measures over 6 inches long on its longest axis.  Don't be fooled by the soft appearance either; that is just squishy tissue stretched over it.  That thing is rock hard.  As of right now, it should be at a lab where it will be examined thoroughly for signs of cancer.  It may even spend some time under study by researchers or something.  Who knows, I'm sure they'll figure out something good to do with it if they don't incinerate it immediately for being so hideous.