On Thursday, it will be exactly 1 year since surgery.
However, party-like social celebrations of this anniversary are being postponed until November.
This is because on Thursday night I will also be stage managing for the first time in about 10 years. On many levels, being able to stage manage is its own form of celebration of the anniversary of surgery. (The show is Psycho Beach Party at the Burien Little Theater if you're interested in that kind of thing)
PT and Volteran are working out well to deal with the back pain of earlier this month. Hopefully once the show is up and running I can get back on my exercise routine and keep up my goals of staying fit.
For now, I'm off to bed so that I can get up and do this crazy theater thing all over again tomorrow night after work.
(I'm going to tag this post later)
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Friday, September 4, 2009
Verdict
There was a lot of waiting involved in this "quick rush in" appointment. I'm pretty used to that with Dr. Williams, so I just rolled with it and was appreciative that he was willing to squeeze me in before the long weekend.
The bones and hardware are all still in place and in tact. I have some uber anti-inflammatories, and a script for more PT (pretty much what I expected). He offered massage and other pain blockers, but I declined. Really I just want to do something to make it feel better. I don't mind hard work or habit changing, but I'm not interested in covering it up and hoping it goes away.
Now, what was I going to do with my Friday again?
The bones and hardware are all still in place and in tact. I have some uber anti-inflammatories, and a script for more PT (pretty much what I expected). He offered massage and other pain blockers, but I declined. Really I just want to do something to make it feel better. I don't mind hard work or habit changing, but I'm not interested in covering it up and hoping it goes away.
Now, what was I going to do with my Friday again?
Update
Since Mom is reading this I thought some other folks might be also. Here's the latest:
After leaving a message with "Jennifer the Amazing" last night, I waited until 9 to hear back from her. My back woke me up at 7, so 9:00 was much later in the day than it normally is on my days off. At 9:05 I hadn't heard back from the usually very prompt nurse, so figured Jennifer was wrapped up in something else. I decided to call in to the front desk and get the appointment process started with them.
I'm pretty happy with Dr. Williams, and Jennifer is great, but OPA as an organization is a very typical corporate medical institution with ridiculous hoops and phone trees. I try to avoid calling the front desk whenever possible. This morning was a good example of why:
Call 1: "Please listen to the whole menu as our options have changed. For appointments press 5...(I press 5)...This is the perscription refill request line. Please leave the following information at the tone...(I hang up)
Call 2: "Please listen to the whole menu as our options have changed. For appointments press 5...(I press 5 very carefully)...This is the perscription refill request line. Please leave the following information at the tone...(I try all the little secret get me out of this menu buttons I can think of including * and # with no success. I hang up)
Call 3: I try for Jennifer's direct extension again, but she's still not there and I'm not going to leave a second message to bother her.
Call 4: "Please listen to the whole menu as our options have changed." This time I listen to the whole stupid menu and hear that I should press 8 for perscription refills. I press 8 hoping that the two lines are just reversed. Instead I get the emergency response nurse who is peeved that she's talking to me. She doesn't seem terribly interested in the fact that the phone tree sent me here unwittingly, and transfers me to the front desk. I sit on hold for a while, get a brief contact with someone and sit on hold a while longer. Eventually the receptionist gets back to me and I find out that Jennifer isn't in today so she's going to transfer me back to the operator where I should dictate a detailed message to be typed up and given to the person filling in for Jennifer today. Turns out that the operator is also the person who answers the emergency line, and she's again delighted to hear my voice.
I've left the message and I'm once again in a holding pattern waiting to hear back about an appointment.
Sigh.
The nice thing about cell phones is I can still go out to breakfast with my boy and I won't miss the call back. (deleted unnecessary snarky comment here) Maybe I'll give a couple PT exercises a try while I wait for Russell to be ready to go eat.
By the time I finished typing this I got a call back, and I'm heading straight to the office right now.
After leaving a message with "Jennifer the Amazing" last night, I waited until 9 to hear back from her. My back woke me up at 7, so 9:00 was much later in the day than it normally is on my days off. At 9:05 I hadn't heard back from the usually very prompt nurse, so figured Jennifer was wrapped up in something else. I decided to call in to the front desk and get the appointment process started with them.
I'm pretty happy with Dr. Williams, and Jennifer is great, but OPA as an organization is a very typical corporate medical institution with ridiculous hoops and phone trees. I try to avoid calling the front desk whenever possible. This morning was a good example of why:
Call 1: "Please listen to the whole menu as our options have changed. For appointments press 5...(I press 5)...This is the perscription refill request line. Please leave the following information at the tone...(I hang up)
Call 2: "Please listen to the whole menu as our options have changed. For appointments press 5...(I press 5 very carefully)...This is the perscription refill request line. Please leave the following information at the tone...(I try all the little secret get me out of this menu buttons I can think of including * and # with no success. I hang up)
Call 3: I try for Jennifer's direct extension again, but she's still not there and I'm not going to leave a second message to bother her.
Call 4: "Please listen to the whole menu as our options have changed." This time I listen to the whole stupid menu and hear that I should press 8 for perscription refills. I press 8 hoping that the two lines are just reversed. Instead I get the emergency response nurse who is peeved that she's talking to me. She doesn't seem terribly interested in the fact that the phone tree sent me here unwittingly, and transfers me to the front desk. I sit on hold for a while, get a brief contact with someone and sit on hold a while longer. Eventually the receptionist gets back to me and I find out that Jennifer isn't in today so she's going to transfer me back to the operator where I should dictate a detailed message to be typed up and given to the person filling in for Jennifer today. Turns out that the operator is also the person who answers the emergency line, and she's again delighted to hear my voice.
I've left the message and I'm once again in a holding pattern waiting to hear back about an appointment.
Sigh.
The nice thing about cell phones is I can still go out to breakfast with my boy and I won't miss the call back. (deleted unnecessary snarky comment here) Maybe I'll give a couple PT exercises a try while I wait for Russell to be ready to go eat.
By the time I finished typing this I got a call back, and I'm heading straight to the office right now.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Truth in Advertising
Hi folks,
For the last several days my thoracic spine has been really painful--like keeping me up at night, the perscription drugs from last fall are looking really appealing kind of painful. I've been wracking my brain trying to think of something, anything, I've done lately that might be causing it and I'm coming up blank.
Over the course of the last two days I've started seriously regretting having this surgery done at all. It's a horrible feeling to think that I went through all that shit of the last year and came out on the other side being in pain more often than I ever was before.
Max convinced me to call the surgeon's office tonight and hopefully get a quickie appointment for tomorrow. I'm hoping that a little physical therapy and body retraining will be all that's required, but this is a pretty dramatic change from a month ago so I'm kind of nervous about what might be revealed.
More Tylenol, ice-packs, and trying to get to sleep for me now.
For the last several days my thoracic spine has been really painful--like keeping me up at night, the perscription drugs from last fall are looking really appealing kind of painful. I've been wracking my brain trying to think of something, anything, I've done lately that might be causing it and I'm coming up blank.
Over the course of the last two days I've started seriously regretting having this surgery done at all. It's a horrible feeling to think that I went through all that shit of the last year and came out on the other side being in pain more often than I ever was before.
Max convinced me to call the surgeon's office tonight and hopefully get a quickie appointment for tomorrow. I'm hoping that a little physical therapy and body retraining will be all that's required, but this is a pretty dramatic change from a month ago so I'm kind of nervous about what might be revealed.
More Tylenol, ice-packs, and trying to get to sleep for me now.
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