September 11, 2023: Around 6 p.m. today, I was transferred by wheelchair from Delray Medical Center (hospital) in Delray Beach, Florida, to The Isles Nursing & Rehab Center in nearby Boynton Beach, Florida, for physical therapy and occupational therapy.
It is here at the center where I will continue my daily therapies following my surgery on September 2, 2023, to remove (clean out) an infection (an abscess) within a disk in my lower spine and osteomyelitis (bone infection) in the surrounding bone.
At this point, I still can not stand without severe pain in my lower back and both hips, plus at the location of the surgical incision in my lower back. Both of my legs are weak, plus I am still dealing with the neuropathy (some numbness) in both of my feet that I have had for many years.
My back surgery went well, except that my left leg was completely numb from my hip to my ankle. Fortunately, I have regained some feeling. A spine physician's assistant told me that because I have feeling in my left foot and that I can lift my left leg, all should be well. I also have some numbness in my right leg, but not near as severe as in my left leg. The numbness in my right leg has also reduced.
At the time of my spinal surgery, I was (and still am) in the midst of a six-week-long regimen of daily intravenous antibiotic infusions for a blood infection and possible osteomyelitis within a fracture in my right Tibia, the latter as per my podiatrist. My right Fibula is also fractured. I fractured both bones of my right ankle due to two falls in April 2023.
The daily antibiotic infusions will also treat the osteomyelitis within the spinal bone surrounding my disk and treat any remaining infection within and around the disk. I think that my infectious-disease doctor added two weeks to my regimen, so that's a total of eight weeks. I think that I am halfway there. (Before I entered the hospital, my wife was doing the infusions at home. My home nurse taught her how to do it.)
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