Had surgery yesterday. The surgical wound hurts just as bad as the first surgery. Only 2.5 of the initial 5 incision sites were reopened. (I think this is how it is for rod removals as well). The lower cut is a single cut where he put 2 of the screws. The upper 2 screws had 2 incisions during the initial surgery because he had to drill the holes, but for removing/reinserting, he only had to cut one open. And the last one is obviously the largest cut for the rod.
It was supposed to be an outpatient but I ended up staying overnight because surgery started late. It started at like 430 and I woke up at 7 in the recovery room. I was in a good amount of pain so I stayed the night and left in the morning. The actual surgery apparently was only like 30 mins. The price tag was only $1200, I'm not even sure if my insurance covered anything because I have a high deductible plan and that isn't met yet. Basically, I'm pretty sure he only charged me for the hospital fee and ate up the anestesia and surgeon fee. And the rod is obviously free replacement from Nuvasive. But i'll keep an eye out on my bills to make sure.
Lengthening is sort of annoying. Because my right rod malfunction, it's actually like ~8mm shorter than my left. My left rod has 18.25mm to hit 80mm. What we're going to do now is to do 0.5mm/day on my left rod and 0.75mm/day on my right rod so my right can catch up. And he'll keep checking x-rays as we go so we can adjust speed if necessary. But it's annoying because I'll end up taking like 4.5 months in distraction phase, which is like a lot longer than most people (~3 months). But shouldnt really increase the consolidation date by much.
If it was not for this rod crack, honestly Precise 2.2 would have been not bad. But this unfortunate 1% crack malfunction is just so upsetting. I'm sure in 3 weeks I'll be like it's whatever, but as of right now, it is just unforutnate.