Hi All,

I am sorry I have not posted in regards to my husbands surgery. He had a posterior fusion of the C7-T1. His symtoms presented as no pain at all just a terrible clawed and unusable hand which just started literally out of the blue. He as had 2 prior back surgeries in the lumbar area. The 1st a disaster the
2nd a revision of the first was a complete success, no rx meds it was truly amazing. He has spinal stenoisis inherited from his Dad. And a care accident didn't help.

Anyway he had the surgery on Feb 25, 2011. What I'm about to post please don't take as something that happens all the time. My husband who was suppose to be there for 3 day was there for 14. What happen? Well he was doing fine discharged papers where completed for March 2 release and on March 1 at about 2:30PM,I was with him when it happened if not I would not have believed it. He stared to get a slight headache which lead to a fever,vomiting which lead to extreme pain and 10 minutes prior he was up walking,eating, talking etc. After 8 days of test, I can't even tell you all that went on. He was moved to ICU put under a temporary sedation so testing like MRI's,CT's etc could be done easily and quickly without making him more uncomfortable. What they used was Ketamine you can use it for long term sedation and then it comes out of the body quickly, well he had a reaction to that. Things got very scary. The end result was all the test came back normal except for a slightly high white blood count but he has bad allergies and does take anti-hisamines so that can elavate the WBC, but we are following up with a hemotologist and a urinary track infection which they treated. The answer I got for the set back was a reaction to the anesthia or medication given to him after surgery or a combination of the both, and then the reaction to the ketamine made it all so much worse. The surgery it self went perfect his hand came back immediately put will still have to do OT which he starts Tuesday. He can drive again and slowly get back to normal, no lifting yet or any type of work that will strain the neck and shoulder muscles. He saw his surgeon on Wedneday and had an x-ray and the surgeon said it looks great. His pain level is also doing well, he's on very little medication at this point.

So after all said and done it was very scary but now that he's getting back to normal and I'm calmer I have to give credit to the doctor and nurses that cared for my husband. They really moved quickly when things happened the first doctor who got there was his neurologist then the surgeon came, who looked like a mad scientist he came right from the OR and looked like I had never seen him and then the pain/anesthiologist spec. I am 70 miles from the hospital he was in so it was tough being so far away. But the nurses kept me up to date when I was not there and I went every day. I think of it now and I don't know how I did it I think I was on auto-pilot.

Well that's my story. Again his surgery to fix the problem worked and had a great team who worked so hard to get him back. I quess that's why we drive 70 miles to go to a hospital.


Gabbycakes