Recovery Barometers

As if it's not already obvious, you need time to recover from spinal surgery. Certainly the extent of the fusion drives the recovery period, I don't really know what my "simple" L5/S1 fusion calls for, but I am measurably feeling better every day. I have a follow up visit with the surgeon on December 23rd, after having already had a follow up with one of the PAs (physician assistants) assigned to my case. 

One of the PAs drew an "air graph" for me after the third or fourth day that correlated intensity of pain and discomfort with the number of days after surgery. As her finger progressed along the imaginary x-axis for time from surgery, the level of y-axis pain decreased significantly. The body is remarkable.

The evolution of PAs is fairly new. These are licensed physician assistants who are able to write certain prescriptions and perform simple exams. They certainly allow to knowledge of the physician to be stretched over their patient base. While in the hospital for four days the surgeon saw me twice. But every day I would be seen by another medical physician and an array of PAs, some of whom worked for the doctor, and others who worked for the hospital. I was never ignored.

One of my followers today asked me via a direct Tweet, "how are you recovering post surgery." Well, they did ask on the very day I was prepared to offer something tangible as an improvement rather than just telling them the conversational, but rather vague, "I'm doing better." I put "better" into words.

Since the follower knows me fairly well, I'm not sure how they thought I was going to answer, but my guess is they weren't completely expecting the reply I gave. And truthfully, I wasn't expecting it either until I thought about it for a split second and started typing a reply. 

"Doing better each day. I can now swipe up the pee I get on the floor by the toilet when I miss. TMI? Liz [my wife] has taken the rug away by the toilet. It looked bad anyway. But it was only temporary. Next bathroom in the next life gets a urinal. Do I feel a posting coming on?"

The reply was simple, and thankfully not the overused LOL, but rather a hearty, "Ha!."

I'm adhering to the BLT guidelines, but feel able to add a little more flexibility to my movements. BLT is described in an earlier posting: http://onofframp.blogspot.com/2021/11/blt.html

Now mind you, all this except the reply, transpired before I went out to lunch with my daughter Susan. Before leaving the restaurant, I went to use the bathroom. We've been to that restaurant before, but I guess I just didn't take notice.

There are two bathroom room doors in the restaurant, each designated with the universal icons to denote MALE/FEMALE usage. I've used bathrooms like this before, but I never remember there being the usual sink and toilet, towel dispenser/air hand dryer along with...a urinal. A true MALE/FEMALE bathroom and one I've threatened to have built if there ever came a new need to design one for a house. (My wife claims she'd never clean it if I were to have one installed. Yeah, so.)

All progress is not measured via the bathroom. My daughter Susan I set up the outside candy canes this evening on what had not yet been a lighted, decorated house. Two weeks ago this would not have been possible for me to do.

TMI? Too much information? Not anywhere nearly as much as a news story this morning on HLN (and probably other media outlets) of the young married fellow's wife who took it on herself to share on TikTok images of how she sent him to the dermatologist.

She was worried about the skin tags appearing on his chest and neck. She wanted to make sure he pointed them out to the dermatologist. Thus, she took a dry marker and circled them with arrows leading to them, and sent him on his way.

All these images were apparently shared via TikTok, with the whole skin tag/dermatology referral going viral. The results of the exam went viral as well, since there was little to worry about since only one tag showed any signs of being pre-cancerous and not untreatable.

Since I am waaaaaaaaaaay older than that young married couple, (they're clearly under 25 and married a scant 6 months) and know nothing of TikTok other than how to spell it, there will be no bathroom pictures of wet tiles that have now been wiped dry because I can bend down better these days—not yet much better than the one knee marriage proposal drop—but certainly without the shooting sciatica pain that made me feel my left leg was being electrocuted.

Medical progress. Getting better each day.

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