First Day Post-OpThe next morning I was wheeled into the room I had checked into originally. A large group of the staff came in with a frosted vanilla cake with cut mango on top and sang me Happy Birthday. I felt okay aside from earlier when I had a brief moment of wifi connection from upstairs. My mom messaged me through the Line app with “How does it feel to be two inches taller on your birthday?” I lost my connection before I could respond that it doesn’t work that way and I had to slowly get to that point over a period of months. Oh well, she’d soon find out.
One of the nurses scolded me and said I had to drink more liquids because my urine volume was low and also slightly red colored, which meant I had a mild urinary infection, so she came in with a carton of Tropicana juice and a pepsi, saying I had to drink all of it so I would urinate. The first physiotherapist I saw the day before arrived and guided me through exercises, which were pretty hard to do as the post-surgery pain had started and was located entirely on my right leg. I was glad that my left leg was still completely numb. After the exercises she told me that we were going to try and get me walking to the bathroom the next day. I wasn't looking forward to it, not even starting distraction yet and already hating the annoying discomfort of my right leg. It felt like a growing pain that just went on constantly without letting up. A nurse came in and shot some saline into my IV and said it would help with infection. She left and another nurse came in with the same chicken and rice meal I had earlier. They wanted me to get something else from a different menu, meat based in particular, but I wasn’t up for heavy foods. One reason was because I didn’t want to do any number two until I could use the toilet. I refused to let myself ask for a bedpan. Dr Divya and one of Dr Parihar’s fellows came to my room to check on me. We talked a little while about limb lengthening before they left and I fell asleep.
I woke up to a sharp sensation on the bottom of my right femur and a combo of throbbing and aching on the top of my right tibia. I tried to tough it out and ignore it. Hopefully the pain would go away, I thought. But the constant throbbing and aching pain eventually made me cave and I started swearing, calling myself a total f-ing idiot for ever being eager to do this to my body. What made the pain worse was that I had nobody to vent toward and I wished one of my parents would call me just so I could tell them how much pain I was in and how stupid I was for doing this. One of the nurses came in and saw that I had my hands covering my eyes and forehead. She asked if I was in severe pain and brought in a doctor I hadn’t seen before. I described to him what the pain was like and where it was located before he stepped out and came back with a needle, proceeding to give me a shot on the side of my right femur. A short while later the nurse came back and injected tramadol into my IV. The pain started to go down slowly but was severe enough to prevent me from sleeping more than a few minutes at a time.
Second Day Post-OpI was given three slices of bread and tea in the morning along with a side of pain killer tablets, which I took right away. I managed to fall asleep finally and was woken up by one of the members of the surgical team who came to change my dressings for me. I noticed the right leg was very clean, but when the left dressings came off I saw the leg was covered in dried blood. He told me it was because that leg was operated on first and so the blood accumulated there. After the dressings were off he changed them all and gave me instructions on how to do it on my own in the future. The physio came and had me stand with my walker for support and walk a few steps. At that point, an elderly man stepped into the room and introduced himself. The surgeon who changed my dressings told me that the man was Dr L.M. Parihar, owner of the hospital and Dr Mangal Parihar’s father. L.M. was really nice and told me he wanted to introduce himself because he heard about the FRRO issue I had. He jokingly said “The FRRO didn’t want to register you as a foreigner, so you are Indian now.” But it turned out he worked hard to have the FRRO register me in Mumbai even though I was registered in Delhi. Apparently the change was definitely not typical, so I had a lot to be grateful to him for. After he left I went back to my bed. Divya then came and I told him of the severe pain I had.
Another physio came and had me do exercises. Eventually I called her because I wanted to walk to the toilet to release all the number two I had been holding. The walker was narrow for my body, despite me using the hospital’s larger walker and wearing narrower frames, and every few steps I would accidentally hit them together, which caused intense vibrating pain for a few seconds each time. It was even more difficult to sit down on the toilet and after the physio waited outside the door I had to slide my shorts off while sitting. Cleaning myself and putting the shorts back on was even more difficult, though I still managed it. After I was assisted back to my bed I was so exhausted from going to and from the bathroom that I did much more poorly on my physio than I had the last times, which was apparently very good for only my second day after surgery – they said it was because I had built up a lot of muscle beforehand. While the second physio was still in my room, a third physio who trained in the States came and got information on the exercises I was doing from the physio who assisted me to the restroom. Divya told her beforehand my lengthening goal and I let her know how long I was able to stay in India, and with that information she left to create a physio plan for me for her visits at my hotel after discharge from the hospital.
At night a young guy stepped into the room with my name and room number written down, asking to see me. Dr Parihar hired him to be my attendant and help me with things like getting on and off the bed, fetching me the urine pot, etc. Divya came back with sandals I had purchased earlier and helped the physio tie straps to them to attach to the fixator for helping prevent equinous. The forcing of the 90 degree angle wasn’t as bad as the slight burning sensation at the bottom of me feet from constant pressure of the sandals. Eventually a nurse came with a wheelchair because I told Divya that I’d like to go to the second floor briefly where there was wifi so I could check my mail. There I saw Dr Parihar again who discussed with me the pain I was having and told me they didn’t want to give me too many painkillers but if I was in severe pain to let the nurse know anyway. Got all my mail checking done, saw that only two people on my whole FB friend list sent me happy birthday greetings the other day, and told my computer screen ‘ah fk you guys’ before turning off the computer and returning to my room with the assistance of the guy Dr Parihar hired.
About My FramesI saw Dr Parihar before surgery so he could let me know what the external fixators would be like. He decided that because of my bulk he would use smaller diameter rings - during surgery he decided to go even smaller than what he showed me and put on 160 mm diameter rings. Due to the small diameter there is some crowding on the side where my leg is close to the frame, but I prevent them from touching using cotton pads slid in between my leg and the frame. There are four wires and two pins at the distal and proximal ends, twelve points where the leg is being pierced with a pin or wire. There are three rings, and the middle rings typically have two pins going through the leg at the middle of the bone. This would make the frames more stable, but then that would also mean more skin tearing and a long scar down the middle during distraction. Because of this he decided to leave off the pins of the middle ring for now. He explained that leaving the middle pins off would allow more microscopic motion in the middle and result in thick callus forming. This might cause some degree of malalignment at the end of lengthening, but if malalignment happens he will replace the rods with hexapod struts and correct the malalignment. After that is fixed, he will replace them with the standard rods and add the two pins at the middle ring for added stability during consolidation.
You can see them in the photos below. I took closeups of all the pinsites, one of which had stuff coming out of it.
Photos
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Topic: No More Mal-Kahn-Tent - External Tibias - Dr Parihar (Read 447001 times)