Rods Trimmed, Sac Drained, Rachel Heads Home

Rachel was standing next to her bed when I got to the hospital this morning. I mean, she still had her IV in and everything, but she was standing there, her same old self except with a big old bandage and no weird lump.

The surgery went off just fine. As it turns out, Rachel's rods were sticking out far enough that her body formed a giant bursa around the ends. Bursa are fluid-filled sacs formed where muscle or tendon slides across bone -- or titanium, in this case. Her bursa was pretty enormous and filled with all kinds of revolting bacterial goop. It grew steadily over the years as the rods moved away from her spine, according to Rachel's mom.

Extrapolating mentally, I envisioned Rachel at 55 with a hunched back full of gnarly pustulent poison. If that nasty sac detonated under pressure, like on a roller coaster or something, it would have killed Rachel immediately and probably anyone within its blast radius.

But now it's over, the rods are clipped and the sac is drained.

Pardon me with an aside here, but: is the word sac nasty or what? It's so strange -- sack is just fine. Groceries come in sacks. Santa Claus carries a sack, and you can get a sack of burgers, which are delicious.

But sac. Ew. When I think of the contents of a sac, I think of pus, testicles, and spider eggs.

Rachel's fine though, barring a surgical opening that needs to heal shut. She's certainly well enough already to clown around with the medical equipment by her bed:



This is a real conversation that we overheard this morning between her hospital roommate, a doctor and a nurse:

Doctor: "How are you feeling this morning?"
Patient: (Replied in Spanish, which neither the Doctor or I understood.)
Nurse, in Spanish: (How are you feeling today?)
Patient: (More Spanish)
Nurse, to Doctor: "I think we can let her go this evening, she's much better."
Doctor: "Well, that does us no good, we need her bed by noon!"
Nurse, loudly to Patient: "Congratulations, pack your things, you're going home immediately!"

Luckily for Rachel and the nurses -- who were probably preparing to dump her in a grocery cart and shove it onto Fifth Avenue -- she's already home recovering. Me, I'm back down from nervous to normally neurotic and heading out to her parents' place this weekend with a bunch of Sopranos on DVD.

Thanks so much for all your concern and comments, too -- we both really appreciated it.

Labels: Beth Israel, bursa, Rachel, sac, surgery, titanium rods

posted by Jeff Simmermon @ 2:36 AM 3 comments

Bionic Woman , Pre-Tune-Up

This is Rachel, my girlfriend. She's beautiful, sweet, loving, and endlessly patient with my constant mood swings. She's also sort of bionic.

When she was a little girl, she started developing scoliosis pretty badly. Doctors eventually opened her back right up and fused two titanium rods to her increasingly unruly spine.

"That oughta teach it a thing or two," everyone thought. Rachel healed up, and life proceeded normally, with flawless posture.

Now, though, there are some new problems. See that bump right beside the scar there? That's not her shoulder blade -- that's the ends of her titanium rods, bending away from the spine and sticking out. It's causing some problems. Her back is sore, there's some numbness.

Tomorrow afternoon, Rachel's going under the knife again. This time the surgeons are going to go in and saw off the ends of those rods, get 'em to lay down a little bit. For some reason I envision her doctor using bolt cutters, those big clippers people use in the city to steal bikes. I doubt those are in the toolbox, though.

They say it's no big deal, she's only going to be in the hospital for two days and will be up and around in a week. If you ask me, two days is an eternity in an age when heart attack victims are all but shoved out the door in a shopping cart after their surgery.

I know this is no big deal, and that everything's going to be just fine. But man, I'm worried all the same. Say a little prayer for us, please?

Labels: bionic, Rachel, spine, titanium rods, tune-up, woman

posted by Jeff Simmermon @ 1:44 AM 8 comments