Emmo The Cyborg, Take 3

On Monday morning I headed down to Mass General in hopes of getting my back fixed and getting things to the point where I would (finally) be able to use my cyborg parts. (See here for the saga of the last 5 months if you haven't heard me complain about it before...) I thought I should post a quick update for everyone who knew I was going back under the knife yesterday...

Things apparently went really well. Dr. Awesome was able to align my cyborg parts perfectly in the middle of my spine (rather than having them leaning to the left and pushing on a nerve) and suture them into place so they shouldn't be drifting over to cause me any further problems in the future. A new guy who programs my ass was able to use the center row of electrodes to send stimulation to both of my ankles, rather than having to use the left row for the left side and the right row for the right side, which is a good indication that the thing is perfectly placed.

After battling with some nurses who refused to believe that I was allowed to leave, I even managed to get discharged last night and come home to my bed, rather than being forced to stay in the noisiest hospital ward I've ever experienced and share a room with a crazy women (who was constantly using her call button or yelling to me and my mom to ask what time it was the entire time I was there). My bed is way more comfy than hospital beds, and my house is definitely way quieter.... That was great.

In terms of whether or not the stimulator is going to be able to do its job, the jury is still out. My new programmer gave me a couple things to play with, none of which work, but it's always an iterative process and there's a lot of swelling and whatnot going on in there right now. I'll be scheduling a programming session with my favorite of the three people who program me as soon as my surgical pain dies down a bit, and hopefully we can get things moving in the right direction.

The one major positive thing, which gets me a little misty-eyed just thinking about it, is that the back pain I've been dealing with for the last 5 months is gone. I still obviously have other pain, since people were cutting my back open and whatnot, but the intense stabbing pain that has made it impossible for me to even sit in normal chairs for the last 5 months is completely gone. When we got home from the hospital I was going to have my mom grab my reclining patio chair (which I've spent most of the last 5 months in both at home and at work) so I could sit in the living room with her, then it occurred to me that I can actually sit on my couch now and it doesn't even feel like there's a knife being twisted in the left side of my back. That, my friends, is pretty effing fantastic.

More later as we determine if we can find a program that works... but things are looking pretty positive so far...