Thursday 30 November 2006

The Story So Far - Part III

The medication didn't do a lot except make me feel queasy a lot of the time and ruin the biggest New Years Eve I'll see in my lifetime. At this point I was actually getting malnourished - I wasn't digesting my food correctly due to the constant spasming of my diaphragm, which also put a good nights sleep out of the question.
So, when I went back to the neurosurgeon he decided he'd have to operate. The basic plan at this stage was to knock me out, stick my head in a frame (including screwing it to my skull!), open up my neck and put one end of a short tube into the cyrinx and the other end into my shoulder. This would hopefully allow it to drain and remove the pressure from my spinal cord. When they opened me up however, they found a bunch of scar tissue around my spinal cord. When they removed this the cyrinx relieved itself. They also removed some bone to make room for the swelling.
As fun as it is to wake up with full use of your arms and legs after spinal surgery, unfortunately, one of the first things that happened to me was a recurrence of the hiccups. This, needless to say, was not good. I was pretty uncomfortable as well - any movement caused a fair amouunt of pain. I had one of those button you press to give yourself a dose of morphine, but remembering to press it before you move isn't the easiest thing when you're semi lucid. It was days before I could get out of bed and walk, and I was in the hospital for nine days in total.
There are three experiences that have stayed with me since that time in hospital. The first occured with the reoccurence of the hiccups. A neurologist came to visit me, introduced himself and then said:
"You've really got a large head"
He turned to a nurse:
"Could you please get a tape measure, we need to measure his head"
Measuring ensues.
"Your head is nearly abnormally large"
None of this had anything to do with the hiccups by the way, but my mother was happy to know that at least there was something to justify a forceps delivery.
He left after giving me a length of hose, a bed pan and the only 100% effective way to cure hiccups: induce gagging. I kid you not. And it works. Unfortunately it wasn't a long term solution (is that a piece of hose in your pcket you use to induce vomiting or are you just happy to see me?) so it was on to more drugs for me.
The second experience happened in the days after the operation. I'd had a few visitors after the op, and on this day I was talking to two of my best friends from school and drinking a can of coke. At least I thought I was until a nurse asked me who I was talking to and my hallucinatory friends disappeared. I then looked down and could see that I wasn't holding a can of coke, but could still feel it there. That morphine's funny stuff.
The third experience, and any men out there can stop reading now if they wish, was having the catheter removed. Now, getting it in was noproblem, I was unconscious at the time. When it came time to take it out though, I knew I was in trouble when the nurse asked me to press my little morphine button and brace myself. What followed was probably the most painful three seconds of my entire life. Surely there's a better way people!
Coming up: The conlcuding volume of the story so far!

Tuesday 28 November 2006

The Story So Far - Part II

Rather undramatically, I did not have a broken neck. In fact, everything looked pretty normal except for my spinal column, which seemed a bit larger than normal. So I got told to be careful and head off for an MRI and then to the neurosurgeon.
MRI, for those not in the know, stands for Magnetic Resonance Imagery. It's like a super x-ray that looks at tissue and all the other interesting internal bits that x-ray doesn't show. MRI's are an interesting experience as well. You lie down on a very skinny bed and are then moved into a big drum. The roof is only a few centimetres from your face, so if you're claustrophobic you're in strife. Then, when they start doing the tests it sounds like you're in a game of space invaders falling down a set of stairs. It's pretty noisy, and not a particularly comfortable place yet somehow I managed to fall asleep.
Later, with MRI results in hand I went to Sydney to see the neurosurgeon. He informed that I had a cyst in my spinal cord, otherwise known as syringomyelia. This thing was pretty big. It ran from near the base of my spine to a third of the way down my back, and at it's thickest was around the size of a plastic cigarette lighter. This "thing" in my neck was apparently swelling and pushing on the nerves in my spinal cord associated with my arm (hence the pins and needles) and my diaphragm (hence the hiccups). The apparent solution: medication to reduce the swelling.
Was it effective? More on that later.

Friday 24 November 2006

The story so far - Part I

In late 1999 I was playing volleyball, dived, and landed on the point of my shoulder. This caused a rather nasty case of pins and needles in my right arm that a GP assured me was just a pinched nerve and some muscle damage. Armed with this knowledge and the invincibility only available to teenagers, I went on to play touch footy a week later and, of course, dived for a try in the corner. Not only was the try disallowed (one eyed ref) but I developed hiccups in the pub later that night.
Now, being a bit of a drinker a case of hiccups in the pub was not much of an irregularity and only rated as a minor annoyance. Until they continued through to the next day. And the day after that.
Now, I was doing a good job of ignoring the problem but my work mates had no such luck. After two days of constant hiccuping one of the guys marched me off to his chriopractor to help me with the pinched nerve causing my hiccups. The guy did a few manipulations, gave me some exercises and sent me home without actually helping much. In the meantime, the hiccups continued.
That weekend, another mate also got sick of my hiccups and took me to another doctor. This doctor stuck a needle in me a few times, blew up when I told him I'd been to a chriproactor who hadn't x-rayed me, told me I may have a broken neck and rushed me off to the hospital for an x-ray.
To be continued...

It starts...

I'm setting up this blog to talk about the issues I have with my spine. I'll use it to discuss the story so far, and my progress as I approach, have and then recover from my surgery. What surgery is that?
In a bit over two weeks I'll be having some bone removed from my C3 and C4 vertebrae and a rod and two plates attached to my spine.
Why is this happening?
Let's just say a few years ago my life took a big turn after a small bump...