I have a date

… with a table and a knife and a surgeon.  (Group dates can be entertaining.)  Yesterday L and I met the neurosurgeon my neurologist referred me to, after we agreed that I wasn’t going to fix the pain with another round of PT.

The surgeon didn’t even attempt to argue against a surgical intervention; his only debate, he explained, was deciding whether to tackle just C5/6 or to go after C6/7 while he was in there.  He said outright that on a different day a week earlier, or two weeks later, he might have felt differently about it, but on that day he felt like being conservative, and only fusing C5/6—subject, of course, to getting in there and finding something he couldn’t see on the MRI.

He also pointed out a smaller herniation at C3/4, similar in scope to C6/7, and said he would have been thinking about intervening on it before he fooled with C6/7—but in the event, he intended to leave them both alone.  He said that I would probably be back one day to deal with C6/7 and maybe C3/4, because they would continue to degenerate and the degeneration might be accelerated by fixing C5/6, but that was no excuse for leaving C5/6 alone.  It obviously needed fixing, and the MRI films made that quite clear.

He wants to use an anterior approach in surgery, going in through the front of my neck, saying it would cause me less pain than a posterior approach would.  A posterior approach would involve cutting a lot of muscle, and that would hurt more and take longer to heal.  I’m not really hepped on the idea of him cutting near my carotid artery and thyroid, but if it’s less painful, then I’ll acquiesce.

The surgery will be done as day surgery—get me in at 7:30, do me at mid-morning, send me home that night barring complications.  Since he’s affiliated with Seton Hospital, he wants to do it there, although we’ve always gone to St. David’s for our hospitalizations.  Still, I don’t have an aversion to Seton; my first three nose jobs were done there in the ’70s, and their standard of care is good.

I don’t know how long I will be out before I’m allowed to return to work.  I need to find that out.  I do know that I’m not going to be able to do a lot for myself for the first week or two, so I expect I’ll have to grit my teeth and make myself ask for help sometimes for things I can’t do.  As I’ve explained before, I have trouble asking for help, but even I can see L and M will have things they can’t easily manage.

Surgery date is Friday, March 27th.  I’ll go in the afternoon of Monday the 23rd for pre-surgical orientation, whatever that may involve, then show up Friday morning and have it done.  I’m going to drop all this on the blood bank when I go to see them Saturday for my regular platelet draw; they’re going to be unhappy to lose me for a year (surgery, possibly receiving blood, and possible bone grafting are all 12-month deferrals).  I’m also thinking that while I’m deferred anyway from the surgery, I might go on and get my ears re-pierced, which I’ve been wanting to do for a while but keep putting off because of the risk of deferral—but if I have to be out anyway, then what the hell.