National Quilting Day

I so wanted to be sewing on Saturday, 3/16.  I heard a vicious rumor that it was National Quilting Day!  In fact, that rumor seems to have spread all over this here world wide web thing.

But instead of me sewing that day, it seems my neurosurgeon wanted another crack at my cervical spine.  Yes, I said "another."  He practiced his stitching on me on the 12th and then again on the 16th.

Doesn't seem fair that he sewed twice last week and he's not even a quilter!!

I'll try to make this short and sweet, but I've never been able to be short and lately I'm not feeling very sweet.  So hopefully you'll hang in to the end.  Maybe there will be a smile or two before it's over!

I went to the hospital Tuesday for a cervical fusion.  I expected to be in there overnight and then home for the rest of the week to recuperate.  Well, I think my friend Forrest may have been right about one thing -- you know, that box of chocolates and never knowing what you're going to get?

Seems the vertebrae are very brittle in my neck, and the cadaver bone and plates and screws weren't holding up very well.  So he kept me in the hospital another day and did a CT scan.  Hmmm, something doesn't look right, so let's send you to get an MRI.  What?  The MRI machine at the hospital is down for repair?  (This is my neurosurgeon talking if you haven't figured that out yet!)  I know!  I'll just order up an ambulance to drive you across the hospital parking lot to another imaging center that's up and running!

Seriously!  That's what happened.  I'm going on 62 years old and I had never ridden in an ambulance. I don't think that was on my bucket list, but it's been written on AND crossed off.  Now, just how do I manage to get those cute EMT guys to drive me there with lights and sirens!  Seems no matter how hard I pleaded and how much they laughed, it just wasn't going to happen.  So I resorted to groveling - as much as I could seeings as how I was strapped to a gurney - and felt quite like a beached whale, I might add!   When we pulled up to the imaging center beached whale gurney door, the three of them shouted "whoop whoop whoop"!!  I told them I was going to pretend that was sirens blazing because my daddy told me never to let the truth interfere with a good story!  :)  :)  Those guys were really having a lot of fun at my expense!  LOL.

Anyway, let's make this shorter.  It was decided to go back in and try to repair and/or stop the crumbling.  So that's what he did.  The surgery was shorter on Saturday because I was already cut open; they just had to take out the stitches (rippit rippit) and replace some of the cadaver bone and screws, plates, etc. 

And you know how I mentioned that temporary veneer that was placed in my mouth a week ago?  Well, it's now in a sterile jar waiting to go back into my mouth.  Apparently I tried to fight them all off coming out of this anesthesia.  They won, but I've got a snaggle-tooth smile to prove I fought the good fight!

So now I'm in a neck brace for four months and am supposed to move very little, no driving, no lifting, no nodding, shaking, smiling -- no, wait, I just made up the smiling part.  I think.  Darn, there are so many restrictions that maybe I'd better check the list just to make sure.  I'm hoping I'll be able to sit up very straight and sew in a couple of weeks, but maybe that won't even be possible.  I guess I won't know until I try, or am told not to try.  At about the three-month mark I think my neurosurgeon said something about an electrical bone stimulator but maybe I was hearing that through drug induced hearing.  There was a lot of that going around this week in my neck of the woods.  Gosh, no pun intended there!

BUT I have learned one thing that will never ever ever happen to me again. I WILL NOT go to the hospital for even one day without my cell phone charger.  It pooped out on the second day I was in there.  I had frantic family because they couldn't find me.  I was able to use the hospital phone to call work because it was a local call.  I tried to text J and D and G and MA and K and S but the texts didn't go through.  I didn't have my wallet with me; just my driver's license and insurance ID card.  In fact, the doctor loaned me money so I could stop and get my prescriptions filled on the way home.  Then when I got there, the pharmacy couldn't break that bill that late at night, so the limo service driver loaned me $30 until we made it the few blocks home and I could get to my wallet.

Okay, smile here.  TWO men in ONE day gave me MONEY!!  Hey, that must count for something!!

It's after 1:00 a.m. and I need to go lay down.  I'm high as a kite right now but I should be sleepy.  I have to set the alarm to wake me up in four hours to take antibiotics.  He really lectured me about that since my spine was opened up twice in four days days and that's dangerous from an infection standpoint.

I'll write more tomorrow or the next day or whenever I can manage to get out of bed.  Thank you all so much for the thoughts and prayers heading my way.  I know they worked.  My sitting here typing with two hands is proof!

ILY, my friends, very much!