The hematoma, however, is a whole new portal of hell. This blog is not going to be for the squeamish, so fair warning! I'm posting the complete realness of my situation and what I'm going through. You know, documenting my life, which is what this blog is supposed to be doing. The good, the bad and the really, really ugly.
During my surgery, a blood vessel busted near the nerve my doctor was working on. He cauterized it closed but when they were bandaging me up afterwards, it busted again and I bled pretty profusely, unbeknownst to us, my doctor or the hospital staff. The blood didn't have anywhere to go so it settled underneath my skin, causing this massive hematoma.
I was in a soft cast for the first two weeks, then a hard cast for another two weeks. After the first two weeks, the hematoma was discovered. After the second two weeks, it looked like this. This is after the staples came out.
After the second two weeks and in that hard cast, it looked like this:
This picture kinda scared my doctor and us, too. He told me my foot was keeping him up at night. Ha! Yeah, me, too. I have been sitting up in my recliner, crying and praying half the night and watching holiday baking shows for weeks. WEEKS. I have Percocet and OxyContin (the king daddy of pain meds!) and they don't even touch this thing. It has been pure misery for me and for Larry, too, who feels completely helpless in this nightmare.
The hard cast came off and we were instructed to change the dressing every day and watch it very closely. I was put on double antibiotics and we went back to the doctor last Friday. He cut off that piece of dead skin on the top there and told us to continue the dressing and the antibiotics. And to massage it a lot to keep Complex Regional Pain Syndrome from setting in.
So now it looks like this:
Lookin' like some straight outta The Walking Dead. Y'all know that's my show but I sure don't want nothin' on my body looking like this.
It hurts like nothing I have ever felt. I don't take the pain meds until I just can't bear it anymore because I am so afraid of addiction. Addiction runs in my family and while I'm not sure if the tendency is hereditary, I will not allow myself to become addicted and lose everything I have to a damn pill. I just will not. Larry changes the dressing every night and sometimes I cry, sometimes I don't. Most times I do. I don't know what I would do without him. He is my ROCK. This is by far the worst thing I have ever been through in my fifty-one years of spinning around on this planet.
Doc says I'll be out of work until March. I'm still trying to get workers' comp to pay me. Our bank account is getting low!
Six weeks down. I'm not sure how long this healing is going to take but I am sure that I will never have another surgery unless my life depends on it. I would GLADLY take that nerve pain (which I still have, by the way) over this any day. I can't go back, though. None of us can, really. All we can do is go forward, move forward, slowly and with lots of gumption.
I can do that.
I have witnessed grown men injured with lesser wounds and cry like little boys. Ginger's iron will throughout this holy terror has been nothing short of amazing. Does she cry, yep, but she fights it like a firefighter in a burning building. She refuses to give into the pain. And it is intense. It irks her to follow doctor's orders and stay in the bed while meals get cooked, kitty litter gets changed, house gets cleaned, shopping gets done, etc. Her doctor FORGOT to prescribe her antibiotics and though it caused her to suffer unnecessarily, she sees it merely as a test of her faith and character. God doesn't cause us our problems, but He certainly pays attention to who or what you go to when the world seems to be your worst enemy. She goes to her friend, Jesus. Ginger schools me every day in courage. LARRY
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