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Carpal tunnel
This week I went to see a neurologist about the problems in my hands. The doctor was quite good and did a nerve conduction test along with reviewing symptoms. The good mews is the testing shows there’s no issue in my neck. That’s quite a relief. The not so good news is it is definitely mild-moderate carpal tunnel and the only real fix is to have a release surgery done. Apparently it will only get worse with time. As it is, aside from the tingling fingers and numbness, I have some weakness, particularly with my thumb.
So I now need to go back to my gp and get a new referral to a surgeon. I had a look at local information on the surgery and it seems there are as many orthopaedic surgeons doing it as neurosurgeons. There were even a couple plastic surgeons. I’m not sure if there are any advantages going to a particular type so will have to rely on my doctor to advise further. The good part is it will only be day surgery and is done within 10-30 minutes depending on which sources I have looked at. I’m guessing it’s likely somewhere in the middle normally.
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Insomnia
I seem to be having more problems with insomnia in recent months than I ever recall having before. Yesterday, the Scientist was having day surgery to trim up a torn meniscus and I was to get up earlier than usual with him to accompany him to the hospital. That was all fine and I even made sure to shift my wake up times to accommodate that change. Unfortunately, on Tuesday night I just couldn’t get to sleep properly and then I kept moving in and out of sleep stages, so I suspect it was a case of not going into deep sleep at any point. Strangely enough I did keep drifting into some sort of sort of sleep where I would have the most bizarre dreams that seemed to come to an abrupt stop. I guess this was REM sleep even though it wasn’t satisfying. Something to check out later on, I guess.
After I dropped off the Scientist, I dropped into the office of my gynecologist that was in the medical centre at the same hospital to see if my test results were in yet. The doctor hadn’t seen them yet but I was told the biopsy came back benign and I could come back at 1pm if I wanted to discuss it with him. If it was all good I really didn’t need to discuss it unless he had anything to tell me about it. I just wanted to know if it was clear for peace of mind. I didn’t really think there would be a problem since my symptoms seemed to fit quite well with hormonal shifts I’d had before.
I went home but my attempts to nap were not successful at all. I did sleep quite briefly once and had another weird dream that ended quite soon after it started. Even though I tried to just stay still for a while in hopes of sleep taking over, I gave up after a while, only to discover I must have only been asleep for a minute or two as it wasn’t much later than when I’d last checked the time. I gave up sleep by mid-afternoon and started drinking lots of tea in hopes it would revitalise me. I also took a shower that seemed to be really helpful and just kept busy the rest of the time.
I didn’t get the call to pick up the Scientist until nearly 8pm and by this time I think the caffeine may have kicked in. Fortunately the roads were pretty clear by this time so it was easy enough to get there and back. The Scientist came out of surgery just fine and he’d been waiting for ages to be processed to go home by the meager evening staff that had replaced the day staff.
When we got home, he ate a bit and then went to bed. I stayed up, playing the game of Civilization I’d started hours earlier while waiting for the call. Soon it was quite late again and I was still feeling rather wired but went to bed. Sleep last night wasn’t a lot better and included strange dreams that I’d wake up from. I should point out that there weren’t bad dreams but seemed rather elaborate and interesting. In fact, I find it hard to imagine how so much information could fit into such short periods of sleep. I did eventually get into some deeper sleep but woke up rather early today.
I’m not too sure about the cause of the insomnia on this occasion but I wonder if the fact I missed a couple days of my anxiety medication is related. I had some bad effects once before when missing this medication but I don’t remember exactly what my sleep was like at that point. I called my doctor’s office to see about getting a new script and was given a bit of a hard time by the receptionist who seemed to think I needed to see the doctor to get it redone. It’s a shame I didn’t realize it was down to the end when I saw my gp last month or I’d have asked for that to be replaced when I was getting a new script for my thyroid medication. I suspect it was only the fact I had been in so recently that persuaded this woman to put it through although she didn’t guarantee it. She said they’d call me if there was a problem. I haven’t heard so hopefully it should be ready tomorrow. Anyway, this is one of the same medications in the same dose that Game Fanatic takes, so I took one of his tablets and will replace it once I am sorted out. I don’t know if the medicine is making a difference but it does feel like I will be able to sleep tonight. Will have to see what happens when I actually get to bed.
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Surgery recap
I guess it’s probably time to make some sort of record of events of my surgery before I forget. My admission time was set for 11am so we left just before 10am in order to allow time to find parking as it is fairly limited around the hospital. We got there and eventually found our way into a side entrance. The Scientist and I passed a man pushing a rather large machine of the sort where visibility is quite limited and he was moving fairly quickly. Just afterwards we heard an older woman crying out as the machine hit her. The poor lady was there due to a recent injury to her hip and she was quite distressed. Fortunately some medical staff came to her aid rather quickly. We arrived at the reception area right at 10:30 so were early as were several other patients. My wait wasn’t terribly long and before I knew it was had been admitted and soon was taken to my room. This was different from my gallbladder surgery last year where I stayed on a bed in a pre-op area and didn’t get a room until after surgery was over. At this point I had no idea when surgery was likely to occur. I was pleased to find my room had a nice view that overlooked the Swan River.
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Home
I’m home after surgery and nearly three days post-op at this point. I will write a fuller account later but will just say it seems to have gone well. I am starting to get the hang of the crutches and not having too much pain when walking. It’s mostly the getting up and down that gives me the most trouble. Have rested and slept a lot since getting home on Thursday. Today i’ve been up and around the house a bit more. Feeling slightly more human now. The knee is quite swollen so using lots of ice on it and also trying to keep up with physio exercises as much as possible. Will update moe when I am ale to sit at my computer. Currently using my iPad and the autocorrect is becoming impossible right now.
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Patella issues
Last year I started seeing a physiotherapist regarding my knee problems. After several visits with somewhat limited improvement, she referred me back to my doctor. I saw my gp, who referred me to an orthopedic surgeon and I first met him last month. After some examination and discussion of issues, he surmised there are actually two problems occurring. Firstly, I seem to have some sort of cartilage tear behind my patella and that’s causing the pain on one side. That is relatively easy to repair using a keyhole procedure called a knee arthroscopy. The second problem is my patella tracks well off to the side of my knee instead of up and down like it should. He sent me for a CT scan which confirms this and also shows it’s a bilateral problem. Correcting this problem requires something called a tibial tubercle transfer, which essentially moves bits around so that my patella tracks up and down again. It requires open surgery and an overnight stay in the hospital. I agreed to have the surgery but did have some concerns as to whether I was being rushed into it.
The Scientist suggested I go back to the physiotherapist to discuss from that perspective so I went to see her last week. She read the report of the CT scan and was of the opinion that I should go ahead with the surgery. She even asked if anything was said about my right knee, which rather surprised me as I don’t have nearly the same problems there. The physio seems to think having this surgery may prevent me ending up with a total knee replacement twenty years down the road. More importantly, she didn’t think the recovery would be all that bad as I will be fully weight bearing from the start. From what I’ve been reading, this seems to be reduce recovery time significantly.
Anyway, my surgery is booked for April 4th which hopefully will give me enough time to recover so that I might miss only one term of my tai chi class this year. The physio even suggested I might be able to get back to it much sooner but I will just have to wait and see how it all goes. And fortunately I only have to fast from 7am and don’t arrive for admissions until 11am. So no rushing out into early morning traffic for us.