Saturday, November 14, 2009

Not-So-Great Stuff

Thursday was 6 weeks after surgery, and as of next Thursday I'm officially allowed to move around like a normal person and lift more than 5 pounds. Yay! In part, it's these restrictions that have kept me from being able to cook in approximately forever (thus making this culinary blog even less culinary than it usually is...). The rest of the reason is that I've been having issues with my back ever since the surgery, to the point where I've missed almost a month of work between recovering from surgery and dealing with my back issues. The "pain scale" is how doctors have you quantify your pain, and it looks like this when put in chart form:
For almost a month now my back has been at around a 5 most of the day, then shooting up in the 8 or 9 range if I do anything other than sit in a reclining patio chair all day. This has been getting pretty frustrating, but in the last couple weeks I've figured out how to make my back stop hurting: Turn off my cyborg parts. I've tested this several times, and the results are consistent. My back feels OK. I turn on my cyborg parts. A couple hours later my back is at a "6" )even though I've just been sitting in a reclining chair for those two hours). Once it gets bad it stays bad for a few days (and, being me, I keep testing it just to be sure). This morning I woke up with my back feeling pretty darn OK, which I think is only because I haven't turned my cyborg parts on since I ran my last pain-inducing test on Wednesday.

My choices right now are to (a) leave my cyborg parts off, which means my ankles are in constant pain but my back is mostly OK, or (b) turn my cyborg parts on, which means most of the pain in my ankles is masked but the pain in my back gets so bad that I can't function. Obviously I'm going with (a) at this point. Hopefully when I see my surgeon on Monday he can give me some better option (c), because the two options available to me now are frankly pretty crappy. And with that, I'm off to snuggle a fat bunny.

UPDATED 11/16: The guy who programs me gave me a new program to try, but it seems to cause the same problem. There's no good option (c). Just waiting for my back to heal (with physical therapy and muscle relaxants to speed it along, which I was already doing) and hoping we can find a program that doesn't cause these problems. Just have to be patient... which is one of my least favorite things to have to be...

2 comments:

Unknown said...

dude, that sucks. is this a common problem for cyborg parts to cause?

emmo said...

The guy who programs my ass says he's never seen it before... Having my back be jacked up following fairly major surgery isn't shocking, but the cyborg parts making it worse is apparently fairly novel...