Alternate title "Thank you, Jebus, for giving me sweet, sweet insurance."
I paid some bills last week that had been piling up from my surgery. I had yet to pay a bill since my surgery, as I am lazy and poor. After the sixth & final notice ("No, no, really. This is the final. Please, please pay us! No? Ok, we'll send you another notice in a week or two.") from one very persistent medical group, I figured it was time to get it over with.
Now that my checks have cleared, we can add $2,470.62 to the $1,736.01 that I already paid (insurance adjusted down from $6,897.36) before the surgery. What is shockingly amazing to me is how much insurance adjusted. Can you imagine what people who don't have insurance do?! So sad. Here's the breakdown:
Anesthesia bill $411.21 (insurance adjusted down from $4,578)
Pathology lab $108.72 (insurance adjusted down from $747.89)
Additional labs $53.60 (insurance adjusted down from $1,108.80)
Hospital bills (this is the real kicker) $1,897.09 (insurance adjusted down from $179,654.02, as detailed here)
So if I hadn't had insurance, based on the original bills, I would have had to pay $192,986.07!!
$192,986.07!!!!!
This does not count the prescription meds my parents picked up for me when I left the hospital. I still have to get those receipts, pay them back and then add those to the running total.
So the new running total on this whole shabang is $4,206.63.
Who wants to buy me a drink? Seriously. Don't make me beg.
The half-year mark
Today marks six months since my surgery. It was singularly the biggest event of my life thus far. It's hard to describe how everything is so very different when there's many things that are the same. I can't stop thinking today about everything that has happened. This post is going to be a long one. If this bothers you, bite me. This is all for me today.
I remember that day
I will never forget it, how scared I was. Any excitement that I felt before the surgery day had flown out the window when I was taken to my personal waiting room. I changed into the gown they gave me in the bathroom and looked one last time at myself and was suddenly so, so sure that I was making a huge mistake.
My thought process on this day, six months ago, in that bathroom: Why was I such a whiner before this? I could get through the rest of my life like this, no problem. So many more people have worse things to live with the a crooked spine and hump back. I could die. I could be paralyzed. I could never do the things I love again. I may never see my family again. I just get my mind set on something, and it's full speed ahead. Jesus Christ, what the hell was I thinking?
Thank God for my mother being there, or I would have lost it right there. I remember laying there watching "While You Were Out" on TLC with her. Everything felt so wrong. I cried to the anesthesiologist. Asked him to promise that I wouldn't die. Asked him to promise that I wouldn't feel anything.
Then it was more talking to my surgeon, more questions from the nurses, happy juice from the anesthesiologist and good-byes to my family & friends. It was so surreal. Everything was bright and white and so normal seeming. Normal for everyone around me. I was in panic mode.
Changes that change everything and nothing at the same time
Today, I can finally say this: I'm glad I did this. This is one of the first times I've ever said that out loud. I am glad I did this. [It's crazy how choked up writing this makes me!]
Today, I don't experience the same sort of awful back pain that I once did. I feel like the pain I get now will eventually go away. It's not the stiff, pressurized pain I once felt, and I don't have pains when I breathe anymore either. I just get kind of achy, mostly when I'm sitting incorrectly or I spend too long in one position.
Today, I look different. My back used to be so much bigger than it is now, so much wider. I used to have a hump on my right shoulder blade. My ribs weren't centered and pointed to the right. My shoulder was higher. Now I have a massive scar that I am seriously proud of. It is my battle wound. I look at it, and I feel like a bad ass.
The lesser pain and the way I look are big differences, but there's so many more changes for me. I have a confidence that I have never felt before. I feel normal. I think I look normal. I have never felt like a normal person before. I always thought of myself as deformed. Not many people would think of that when they would see me, I know. But once you knew, you saw it. I always would look at my girlfriends from the side. You could just barely see their shoulder from the back of the arm then straight down to the small of the back. Mine was a giant "S" from the side. Strapless dresses with zippers? Forget about it. They didn't make them fit my type. Seems crazy to be so upset over that, right?
I remember in high school being in a high school pageant. I didn't win. Later, a teacher who was very friendly with my group and happened to be a judge, said I didn't win because I looked so bad in my dress. I still get mad about that. And embarrassed.
The big changes for me are all internal. Going through days and weeks and even months of pain changes you. I feel I look like everyone else, but I feel better about it because I had to fight to get here.
I've heard a lot of people tell me how amazed they are at my recovery and how quickly I've come out of it. I still feel like I'm in recovery a little, and whenever they say this I secretly scream inside that they have no idea what it once was like for me, but I get what they're saying, and I agree. I thought I'd still be struggling a lot more at six months than I actually am. Why would this be better for me?
I'm going with a few different theories on this now that I can look back at things with a little perspective.
One thing, I prepared myself as much as I could. I worked out constantly. I gave up smoking, caffeine, all the list of meds my doc gave to avoid. I saw a massage therapist/energy manipulator the night before my surgery to clear the air, so to say. I joined an online support group to learn more about the experience I'd be going through and get tips on how to survive. I started my blog to get all this shit out of my head. I gave myself two mantras to focus on whenever I needed them (1. I will be ok. My angels will guide me. 2. I plant this hurt in a sea of good thoughts and it floats away.).
Two, "buddha, buddha," as my friends and I call it. I asked my angels to be in the hospital with me to take care of me (Sally, Kelsey's uber-buddhabuddha mom said the surgery room was packed). I prayed to God. I prayed to each of my angels by name. I asked everyone I talked to to pray for me. I blogged for prayers, begging people to pray again. If for nothing else, the praying helped me to concentrate on something, made me feel like I had a small army around me. I truly believe I did, though, especially when I think about all the people out there who were concentrating on me and praying for me. I can't prove it, but I know it to be true. Faith, I guess. (I'm not so skeptical anymore.) I was so ready to give up at times, I knew I needed something much bigger than me to pull me through it.
Three, my support. I've read online about people going home, alone after their surgeries. I am so lucky that I had my family to go home to. My mom and dad were there for me day in and day out, and I will never forget how blessed I am to have them. I don't deserve these parents. Few people deserve the great parents I have. Same goes with the rest of my family and my friends and all the ridiculous amount of love, support and care I received. I'm going to include my surgeon and his staff in this. I am lucky to have one of the best specialists in the world for scoliosis practically in my backyard. The care I received is unreal. My blessings go on and on.
Present day
I'm not 100 percent recovered yet. I go to work, just like before, I just have a better chair to sit in now. I am back to working out, I'm just not ready to dance yet. I can't lift more than 25 pounds, and twisting into some of my old yoga positions seems like a funny joke right now. I look similar, but different. I have kick-ass posture. I get a lot of people telling me just how different I look. Quite a few friends have told me it's deeper than that. I have something inside me that's finally showing on the outside, too. People who really know me have actually said this to me, no lie, which is wonderful because that is how I feel. I'm still me, just better, I think.
One reason I decided to do the surgery was to prevent a lot of bad things from happening to me in the future. I am still scared of bad things but from a different perspective now. I am so happy with where I am today that I now worry about what would happen if I started to go crooked again. What if the rods slip or break (this can happen!) and I have to do this all again? Would I do it all again? I am so happy now. [Wow! I can say that!] I would like to think I would do it all again, but I don't know that I could physically, emotionally, mentally go through this ever again. It makes me so sick to think about. Many people have multiple surgeries for scoliosis over the course of their lives. I pray to God and my angels that this one time will take for me. Fingers officially crossed.
So, with all that off my chest now, happy anniversary to me and to every single one of you who has been with me through this! Six months down! I could have NEVER EVER been able to get through this without so many of you. Once again, to mom, dad, Wendy, Misty, the kids, Matt, Kelsey, the Stroopes, Carra, Monica, Janet, Barry&Jayne, the Pollards, Monette&fam, my Oncor colleagues, everyone who visited me or called me when I was away, to Dr. Hostin and his staff, to my beautiful Baylor nurses: thank you, thank you, thank you! xoxo
I lived in the ICU for three days. If you read Kelsey's post from Jan. 17, you know some of what happened in there.
One more angel
Each day I would have two nurses to take care of me - one during the day and one at night. These nurses were wonderful. One specifically, Nurse Tricia, was so good to me. She was a soft-spoken lady and very pretty. When I would complain about the pain and ask (beg) for help, I felt like she really wanted me to feel better. She was genuinely concerned. One time, the pain was so bad, but she couldn't give me anything; and I was soooo thirsty, but I couldn't have anything to drink either. She found these little spongy stick things, soaked them in water and gave to me to suck on. It wasn't much, but it helped.
This is how much this nurse went above and beyond- on the morning of my third day in ICU, she offered to give me a sponge bath to make me feel more comfortable. She recruited another nurse, and together they cleaned me up. All I had to do was lay there. This was the best part of my entire stay. I felt at least a little bit less sickly.
It is soooo important to have a good nurse. With one exception, which I'll get to in a future post, all of my nurses at Baylor were phenomenal. They made me feel like I was their top priority and like they really wanted to help me feel better. If I needed something, they tried their best to get it. Sometimes that just involved listening to me and consoling me when I was crying and upset, and they did so, no questions asked. These moments cannot be undervalued. Thank you to all my nurse/angels!!
Please, leave me alone
Every day, a slew of technicians, nurses, specialists, doctors, blah, blah, blah, would come to my room to pick at me, move me and make me do an array of things I just did not want to do.
The worst of the bunch were the x-ray techs. Each day, very early in the morning (maybe so visitors wouldn't hear me yell at them?) two of them would come in with a portable x-ray machine. One would stand on each side of my bed. They'd then countdown and lift me up and over using the sheet underneath me while one put a large, hard film case (sorry, I don't know the technical terms) where my back would be. Then they'd roll me back onto it. "OUCH! Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod hurry!"
They'd take a picture, then lift me again and remove it. I'm sure they're very nice people in real life, but I hated them. Before I realized my dislike, I remember apologizing to one of them for my rank breath. I hadn't brushed my teeth in days and could feel the stench in my mouth. He said it was ok and not to worry. I never apologized for it again.
Just breathe
Another frequent visitor to my room was the respiratory therapist. (Thank you, Kristen, for the explanation of what follows) After surgery, you tend to lay around and not move much, so you begin taking slower, shallower breaths. If you aren't fully expanding your lungs, the tiny air sacs at the base of your lungs could collapse, leading to pneumonia. This is called atelectasis. To combat this, a respiratory therapist would come to my room multiple times throughout the day to do breathing exercises with me.
One of my frequent tests involved using an incentive spirometer. The picture on the left is the same one that I have. Every couple of hours, I would need to breathe on the tube, trying to make the yellow piece on the far left and the white piece in the middle raise up and stay up as long as I could on an inhale. I believe they would want me to do 30 inhales. When I left the hospital, they gave the incentive spirometer to me to use at home.
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Additionally, I would have to do another respiratory test each time with a device that I can't remember what it was called. It had a long clear, plastic balloon on one end. The tech would put some kind of chemical in it, and I would have to breath in and out until the balloon filled all the way up. Then, he or she would remove the balloon and tell me to keep breathing. These exercises were surprisingly hard to do. Now when I blow on my spirometer, I can easily get it to the top. Then, I could barely do it. It was also very easy for me to lose count when trying to get my 30 breaths in or almost fall asleep or get light-headed, another thing I will attribute to all the drugs.
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Then there were the physical and occupational therapists. Oh man. In the spirit of keeping this post from turning into a small novel, I'll blog on them later. Stay tuned!
An interesting turn of events
Last weekend having a gigantic, scary-looking scar finally paid off. I 
was an extra in my friend Joe Harris' music video/short film called, "The Butcher of San Antone" for the band Tumbledown. I was one of the butcher's casualties.
Score one for the disfigured!
Here's a (poorly taken cell phone) pic of what my scar looks like now, for those of you wondering. It's healing very nicely, if I do say so myself. I've even been told (wink, wink, Matt & Joe) that it's kind of "hot" looking. My thoughts? Tough, sure. Impressive, maybe.
Either way, there's a good chance that I can always win the my-scar-is-bigger-than-yours contest. There are contests, right?
intensive care unit (ICU). Once I arrived in ICU after my six-hour surgery, I remember talking to Kelsey and Matt. Sorry to anyone else that was there. For some reason it seems we were kind of laughing, which seems about right since Kels said I was being quite humorous. I guess I was still feeling the happy drugs from my anesthesiologist. Kels, Matt, mom or anyone else who was there, please feel free to add stories and observations to the comments section about the first time seeing me or talking to me in ICU. 
who was sitting in the recliner by my bed watching TV (pic at left is of Wendy in the waiting room during my surgery). She stayed really late until visiting hours were over, or so we thought. We found out the next day that I could have someone stay the night with me in my room, just no in-and-out visitors. I remember feeling very happy that she stayed for so long (thanks, Wendy!). I don't know if it was the drugs or what, but I felt close to everyone who was around me. Which brings me to my nurse. 
In addition to the morphine drip, I had an array of new tubes and pins going in and out of me. Working down from my head, I had a nasal cannula, which you can see wrapped across my face in the picture to the left. A nasal cannula delivers low-flow oxygen and is common to have after surgery to help regulate your breathing. At first when I had the cannula, the flow was a little strong. It reminded me of the air conditioner knobs above your head on an airplane that when you turn you can feel this pressure of air coming out and hear the hiss. Eventually, the nurse realized this and turned it down. I never thought twice about it after that. 
not least, I had a catheter in my bladder that released into a lovely bag seen at the bottom of my bed in the picture to the left. Every so often my nurse would lift the sheets and check this catheter to make sure I wasn't laying on it wrong or it wasn't twisted. Let me tell you, there is no room for modesty in the hospital. And, for that matter, when you're in pain like I was in pain, you really don't care. 
Work has been good. I showed up last Wednesday to many warm welcomes. My co-workers decorated my office and gave me a card and gift basket. The boss bought lunch, so the day was wonderful. I take my pillow with me to work to use when sitting long hours in my office chair. Every day someone I don't know makes some kind of crack about me sleeping on the job. Tuesday, it was the security guard shouting at me across the lobby. I don't mind. It is making me consider buying a pillow to just leave in my office, so I don't have to drag mine in each day in front of everyone.
As far as how I physically feel after work, it's not too bad. I get tired and lately my shoulders have been really hurting. Hurting enough for me to take a pain killer when it happens, which I'm trying to cut back on.
I went out with friends for the first time last weekend. It was so much fun, especially since I hadn't been out since the weekend before my Jan. 14th surgery. Even though I've been out now and working again, I'm still trying to take it easy. I get plenty of sleep, rest whenever I can and am careful of how I move.
Next up: another recap from the hospital.
This week I felt pretty good. Not normal, but good, considering.
On Friday I...
drove for the first time since Jan. 13.
On Saturday I...
put on makeup for the first time since Jan. 13.
fixed my hair for the first time since Jan. 14.
wore a bra for the first time since Jan. 14. (I was scared to have the back strap rub against my scar, so I put on a tank top first and wore my bra over it on the widest setting to reduce the contact against my incision.)
shaved my legs for the first time since Jan. 14. (Seriously. Not because I didn't want to, but because it was impossible at first and still somewhat hard to reach my legs with these giant rods in my back.)
bought a car on my own for the first time ever in hopes I can go back to work soon. (Mine was wrecked in October.)
Today I...
went to see my surgeon for my second post-op appointment. As of tomorrow, I will be seven weeks post-op. He ok'd me to go back to work, so tomorrow I will start work again. I don't plan on working full days. Not yet. Tomorrow will just be a test day for me to see how I feel. Luckily, I have a super understanding boss and co-workers, and I'm set up with everything I need to work from home. The part about tomorrow that sounds the worst to me is driving from my parents' house, where I've been living since the surgery to enlist their help during my recovery, to Dallas, a 45 minute drive without traffic. Sitting in a car can be uncomfortable for me.
One thing I am looking forward to is using my new bag. I bought a beautiful briefcase on wheels to take to work, so that I don't have to carry my laptop and all my work items in a shoulder bag. I always hated people who used those rolley bags on the bus and train. I would think, "how lazy are they!?" and would be mad at how slow they got off and how they were always in my way. Maybe I misjudged them...
Back to what's important
My doctor's appointment went well today. He said I'm progressing well and my back looks good. We took more x-rays and looked at them together. My left shoulder is still higher than the right (you can tell this by looking at my last x-ray; it looks pretty much the same as the x-rays we took today, so I didn't bother getting a digital copy to put on here), but he thinks this may even out more in time.
Since the last time I saw him, I read his detailed description of my surgery, given to me at my first post-op appointment. In it, I read that a decision was made during surgery to extend the fusion (fusion of the spine and stainless steel rod) down further than anticipated in order to reduce deformity. The incis
ion was extended accordingly. I asked about this today since I hadn't realized before that this had happened. Basically, he said he didn't feel like my curves would be straightened enough without extending the fusion. I have a little bit less movement in my back as a result, but I still do have most of the movement in my lower back. When it's all said and down, my fusion is from the T2 (T is for thoracic) to the L1 (L is for lumbar) vertebrae in my spine. While I would prefer a smaller fusion, I would rather have a straight, deformity-free back, so I've accepted this the best I can.
I asked about when I would feel normal again and wouldn't notice that I have foreign objects in my body. He said that is different for everyone, especially depending upon age. The younger kids he operates on feel pretty good in the first three months. The older adults take longer, many needing a full year or so. I would be somewhere in the middle.
In the meantime, I can do most of my normal activities and should listen to my body when deciding how much to push it. He wants me to be as normal as I can be. As for working out, I can do some cardiovascular activities, but he wants me to hold off on anything too hard until I'm completely off the pain pills. I'm assuming that's so I can listen to my body better than if I'm messed up on pills. I specifically asked about yoga, but that's a no for now.
Before leaving, I signed a consent form to allow other patients to contact me. I want anyone who has questions or just wants to talk to someone who's been through it to be able to call me up and ask away. In my first post-op appointment with Dr. Hostin, he asked me if the pain was what I thought it would be. I told him that it was far worse than I ever imagined. He was surprised at this and said something about me talking to other patients of his, which I never had because I didn't realize I could. I wish he would have offered this to me before my surgery, but that's ok. Bygones.
Crystal ball
My dad drove me to my appointment today. On the way, he asked if I'm happy I've done this. Honestly, right now I'm not sure, and I don't want to say which direction I'm leaning for or against. I think in a year, I'll say "hell yes," or at least I hope so. We'll see.
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