A Potted History - Part 3

Eventually, we just had to press ahead with the operation to remove the ISKD – my weight gain had continued, much to my frustration and although still in a lot of pain with my leg and back they had settled down to a more manageable level. I was also on the waiting list to take part in a Pain Management Programme in Leicester, which I was hopeful would make a difference. In July 2015 I went up to Edinburgh for what we expected to be a few days and the straightforward removal of the ISKD nail. 

My pre-op x-rays looked good and H was happy that the condition of my femur meant he wouldn’t have to secure the bone with a permanent nail. X-rays taken during the operation backed that decision up. I’d been awake in recovery for a little while and although in some pain it was tolerable. I moved my leg and there was an explosion of pain but I put it down to having just had surgery! I needed the toilet and the pain was so intense I just couldn’t lift myself up, even with support, high enough to get onto a bedpan so the nurse found a she-wee, which we just about managed. I don’t know how much later it was that I needed the toilet again but this time even manoeuvring into a position to use the she-wee was too painful. The nurses began to get concerned at this point that even with morphine I was in so much pain but the immediate need was that I needed to empty my bladder. In the end I think there were 4 nurses and my Dad trying to lift me up just enough to get a bedpan under me and oh my goodness, I screamed the place down. I can’t even begin to describe the intensity of that pain, it was unreal. Serious concern now meant I was taken off for an x-ray to check everything was okay with the femur. It was broken. A spontaneous fracture had occurred while I was lying down, in recovery.

H came to talk to me and said we would now need to pin the femur with a permanent nail. No problem. He asked why I was eating and I told him that the registrar I’d seen a short while before had told me there were no surgical slots left that day so I may as well have something to eat. I have genuinely never seen H so furious and I dread to imagine what trouble that registrar got into! Because I had eaten it now wasn’t possible for me to have surgery that day, which H would have ensured happened, slots or no. The next day I went down to theatre again and had a nail inserted. When I came round H explained that apparently my femur doesn’t run straight and true – about halfway down it sort of skews off to the left. Unfortunately surgical nails are straight! This meant the femur could only be pinned to just over halfway down, which was less than ideal but would do the job required, which immediately was just to secure the bone. I ultimately spent about 3 weeks in hospital before being released on strict Occupational Therapy rules not allowing me to use stairs until at least after my next check-up, Mum having to go out and buy a bed of a very specific height and a variety of other things. My parents living room became my bedroom for the next few months and I had to use a commode, be given bed-baths and very slowly start to use a zimmer frame. What should have originally been a recovery time of a few weeks became over a year of recovery and rehab. 

Part of my recovery came with completing the Pain Management Programme but I plan to dedicate a series of posts to that. For now I will just say that it was a completely transformative process and I feel very lucky to live somewhere where a programme like that is available. 

I am still on a regimen of medications, including morphine that has been constant since that last operation. I walk with crutches and use a wheelchair on bad days. Recently I began a programme of physiotherapy and pilates that is taking me right back to basics, which I am paying for myself. Right now I’d say I’m in a good place, physically and mentally. The last 8 years have certainly taught me that I took for granted the level of health and mobility I had achieved in my mid-/late-20’s and when I get back to that place (which I will) I am going to treasure and embrace it. It’s all a work in progress but after 27 years I've kind of gotten used to that!