F-ing Following -up

I went back to my Old (insert your own colorful language here) Ortho today. He actually came to visit me in the hospital after my new Ortho did my hip surgery in November. He told me to make a follow up appointment. Sure thing, buddy I'll just call from my hospital bed to rush an appointment at your stupid office for a year and change old surgery. Uh-huh. I got discharged, there was the holidays and healing to get done. Then my dad had the misfortune of hurting himself and getting Old Ortho as his trauma surgeon. Jeepers. Any way every time my dad went in Old Ortho would ask why I hadn't made an appointment yet.

Well, I was busy getting ready for my wedding and told my dad to tell Old Ortho to lay off. Once the wedding was over I was out of good excuses. I kept hearing his comment when I fell shortly after the surgery echo in my head: "Katie, I put those rods in 300lb men who do more damage walking around then you could ever do falling." So, why when I'm just short of the 2yr window I was told healing would take place in do I have to drag myself into to this den of misery? If you think I'm being over dramatic go read about it, there are posts upon posts.

I called to schedule thinking I could get in the same day as my dad and found out Old Ortho was out of town for 3 weeks. Of course. Today was the day. I had trouble sleeping I was so anxious. My appointment was at 10am. I arrived at five minutes to 10. I waited until well passed 10:30 to be called back (nothing new there). Then the PA asked why I had requested the appointment. I sighed heavily and told her the Ortho requested I come to x-ray my back. She seemed confused. Then revealed that the order in front of her said "left hip x-ray." Nice. Even though Ortho made the request for a back x-ray and I relayed that when making the appointment it got screwed up. I'm lucky I only have one back, no telling what kind of confusion could occurred.

She crumpled the order right in front of me and wrote a new one. The only problem was my chart was very think and she didn't know how much of my spine was fused. I watched her struggled for a few moments and then in my annoyed teenage girl voice offered "It's T3 to Sacrum". She thanked me and set me over to X-ray. Where the tech was also confused (surprise) and it took two sets of films to finally get what he needed. Old Ortho never made an appearance, jerk. PA came into the room put her fingers on "the sore spot" and said "does this hurt". Apparently, you can see the metal "protruding into my soft tissues" right there on the x-ray. No kidding, guys. The lump that's clearly visible when you walk behind me is another clue. It's hurt there for almost two years.

Then there was an actual piece of news. They can do something about this. A small incision over the area, remove the two (now unnecessary) cross beams, they connect the rods on either side of my spine, like the middle of an uppercase H. I'd be home again in a few hours with a few stitches. Just a day surgery. There is no "just" at this stage. I refused to schedule before I could discuss it with Mike and process. We'd made a big commitment this week and I am so sick and tired of surgery. Plus, I'm afraid that what my dad told me about a link between frequent exposure to anesthesia and dementia is true. Mostly though because it f-ing sucks.

I came home discussed it with Mike. “We can handle this, it's clearly the right thing to do”, etc... Then when Riley fell asleep for nap so did I. When I got up I tried to schedule it for ASAP, but the scheduling person left early today. Of course.