I’m sitting in a hospital waiting room while my wife is in surgery this morning. She’s been having intermittent back pain for the past several years. We’ve been trying various remedies. From pain injections to physical therapy and other treatments but nothing has really ‘done the trick’. So we’re upping the attack to something called a laminectomy where they go in the middle of her back and through a small incision, clean out the intersection between two sections of her spinal cord. Her pain Dr thinks that this will alleviate the issue.
I’ve heard from other people that it has about a 60% chance of working. It’s not a slam dunk surgery, pretty much there isn’t something like that in this field of treatments. You do it, and see how it works out in the future. She needs a follow-up appointment next week to be sure that things are healing up properly. Of course, it’s hard to schedule work around such things, especially during the holidays. I’ve had to use 2 vacation days this weekend in order to be home while she recuperates. This coming Wednesday I need to take a couple hours off from work to get her to her follow-up appointment. Just has to be something to roll with. Fortunately, I have a good rapport with my new work supervisor so I don’t perceive a problem with getting it. Sucks that it’s on Christmas Eve, but you have to roll with things as they come, right?
In the last couple of years surgeries have been the norm, rather than the exception. 2024 was the year of my kidney stone surgeries, one in July and the other in December. Fortunately this year we’ve been able to stay away from that sort of thing, until we got the news about this.
My wife went to a different doctor in October for a second opinion. This guy looked at the tests and MRIs etc and suggested a similar but different sort of surgery that was more involved with the addition of hardware instead of just cleaning out the spinal cord. When he explained it for some reason he left out the information about exactly how the surgery worked. He said a lot of things, but the words ‘screws’ and ‘pins’ weren’t in the word salad. So we decided to with the less invasive option.
Too, this is outpatient surgery. She has it done, and she gets to go home right after. The other doctor wanted to do his surgery in Pennsylvania and it would be more invasive, so she would have to stay there a night or two and then be transported home. Something 90 minutes from home would be a hardship, and she wasn’t very open to it. Which I can understand. I was in the same hospital last year. While I didn’t have a procedure there, it was still difficult to get to and from. Better to keep it close to home if possible.
Just checked the status board and she’s probably going to be in the OR for another hour or so. Fingers crossed all goes well. At least I have my Christmas tunes to pass the time.
More later.