slacker

I am such a slacker as far as blogging goes. We are on vacation though so that should give me a little bit of an exucse. Been a great trip so far. We have been doing lots of things and I can't wait to share a little more once I figure how how to put pictures on this thng...anyone know how?

The Whole Story, well most of it

okay, so I thought I would go through the whole story just to have it down so I could just refer people to it. So it started about January I guess as far as it really stepping up. I guess I have had back pain for a while and went to a chiropractor about a year before for what I thought was a sore muscle. But anyway, I had really for the first time in my life decided I no longer wanted to be twice the woman I had become so I noticed that Ballwin was having a "lose to win" challenge so I figured that would be a great opportunity and joined. I went a few times, my trainer was great and really pushed me so hard and I was actually even starting to get a little bit of that enjoyment I had heard of from a really hard work out. One morning I woke up and was in a blinding amount of pain so I called the doctor. Well, turns out one of the little machines they had me use for back extensions we thought I may have hurt myself on so I did PT for about six weeks with no relief so we did an x-ray and they found I had a tumor in my spine, well not exactly a tumor but a lack of where they should have been bone. This led into months and months of every test they could come up with. From what I have been able to figure out is that what they thought it was was metastatic cancer and they were looking for the primary site. Four months later after MRI's, CT's, blood tests, PET scans, ultrasounds and whatever else they decided that there was no known cancer anywhere else in my body so we did a biopsy to get the the bottom of the one that I do have. After several biopsy and two different neurosurgeons I was finally given a diagnosis of desmoplastic fibroma. It is one of those things that is so rare and hard to pin down that it kind of falls into that middle ground between cancer and not cancer. It pretty much is but isn't at the same time. Too slow growing to have to worry about chemo or radiation but also means they can't shrink it before they take it out and have to take it out in total. It is located on the T11 vertebra so the operation is going to pretty much suck ass. They will also have to be taking out the pedicle and side of the vertebra right above and below the tumor so three in total, not to mention collapsing the lung so they have room to do all this and doing something to the ribs since they won't be attached to anything anymore. And of course adding rods and pins and nuts and actual cadaver bone. I wonder if this will change my personality like that movie I saw one time. I don't know much about the recovery yet. I will be in the hospital for about a week and then home unless I am having trouble breathing on my own after the collapsed lung, then I get to go to a nursing home for a week or two. Could be interesting, all the tapioca I can stomach. Okay, off to bed...trying to do pictures on here so I can add some things I have found

cane shopping

so, I bought my first cane today, pink of course. I totally plan on pimping it out. I plan on putting sparkles on it as soon as I figure out the best way to make them stick without leaving a sparkle trail everywhere I go. Please let me know if you have any ideas. Maybe do the whole thing with spray glue and then shelack it? I don't really want to have that permanent sticky feeling either though. Oh decisions, decisions. Who knew that being a short term cripple was such a fashion nightmare! Well, probably everyone. Maybe I will go into business making young, hip gimp supplies. I don't see how that can go wrong at all. Anyone want to invest? I have always had a habit of naming inanimate objects. Most notably were Sparky the space heater, (which was more of a tempting fate thing than any actual fire hazard) and Lassie the radar detector (because it was always going off at odd times, usually near the schnucks, where we figured the bad guys were holding Timmy) So of course I had to find a name for the cane, I think we are going to have to go with Candice for obvious reasons. Candy would be too obvious, but Candice is okay. Again I am open to suggestion. I thought of going with Michael but it is too pink for a boy name although maybe I am putting way to much thought into it.

pre-op appointment

really not even sure what to say is going on. Went to my pre-op appointment the other day and pretty much found out that as bad as I thought it was going to be doesn't even come close to what I will get to do. Pretty much I will have to have several of my vertebra out, they will be putting in rods, screws and cadaver bone, that last part was new. They will have to purposely collapse my lung and hope I start breathing again, if I don't I will end up in a nursing home for an extra week afterwards. This is going to be hella painful because they only want to give you so much pain meds because they want your nerves to be firing since they will be removing so many of them I will need to regrow them. I will have a sizable portion of my flank section on the right side that I will never have feeling in again anyway and since they are working right on top of the spinal cord there is a chance of paralysis from the waist down. Basically this is going to suck big time and the doctor pretty much told me so. Well, basically what he told me, wait I wrote it down, is an end block resection of a T11 lesion with associated thoraco-lumbar fusion and pneumothorax. Right now we are set to have the operation on October 7th so stay tuned!