The Po Show

Needled

So sometimes things do fall into place. After my woeful last post, in which I bemoaned how, for want of a friend who could help, I would not get an epidural in my neck. I tried to console myself, musing that a needle in the neck might not be something to desire so fiercely, and how did I know it was going to help anyway?

Sour grapes, that was. I was thrilled when the spine doctor called me late Friday night and said that he'd had a cancellation and could get me a spot in his schedule at a different surgical center in CT, one that did not insist that patients getting a needle stuck into their spinal cavities have someone to drive them home (as long as they chose not to be sedated, which makes sense, I guess). Of course, if I heard that someone else was planning on doing this, then driving her 8 year old child home, I might look askance at the whole endeavor.

Monday came and there Tessa and I sat, waiting for the doctor to show up. She had already waited for me during my physical therapy appointment that morning, reading her book in the waiting room. It was her first day of the summer with no camp activities, and she was spending the day waiting for me in cold, sterile waiting rooms. She got to come in with me to the "little room" as I changed into a gown and waited for the doctor to show up (half an hour late). Then she was left behind as I marched off to the OR. What a brave girl!

They let her come back to the recovery room after it was all over, and the nurse gave her a popsicle. She was subdued, but she really did so very well with what was no doubt a scary experience. I was feeling weak and out of it, but I honestly think it was the accumulated stress of worrying about her and worrying about getting back to Matthew (fortunately I was able to get a friend to pick him up at school). And the fact that I hadn't eaten anything since early morning. But my first impulse was to insist that I was fine, so after a relatively short period of time, they let me go. I hurried to pick up Matthew, then we went home and I utterly crashed. I could not stay crashed, since Ross was in DC and I had to feed and otherwise care for the kids, but in any event, it was over.

It took about four days for me to come to the conclusion that the epidural actually seems to have helped. The right side of my neck, where the injection went in, hurts less now, and I have a lot more mobility on that side. The left side still hurts, but it hurt less than the right side to begin with. So I am happy to report that all the angst of the episode seems to have been worth it.

Though that doesn't mean I'm not going to need pharmaceutical assistance to get through a six hour plane ride next week! After he saw my MRI, the orthopedist was more than happy to call me in a script for muscle relaxants. I had a follow-up with him the day before yesterday, and he looked over my MRI again and said I must be really stoic :D. I guess because I didn't cry more for drugs before?