My Torn-Up Self

October 28, 2023: The Isles Nursing & Rehabilitation Center, Boynton Beach, Florida (https://ibnrc.org/)

My wonderful wife took this photo of my physically torn-up self (*), when she visited with me this morning.

I am still engaging in almost-daily physical therapy and occupational therapy, following spinal surgeries on Sept. 2, 2023, and on Oct. 6, 2023, both at Delray Medical Center in Delray Beach, Florida.

I am still enduring much pain, weakness, and numbness from these surgeries. I am also frustrated and disheartened, because I really want to return home, but I am really not progressing physically enough to do so. I can barely walk, even while using a frame walker with two front wheels. Both of my thighs ache, but they are also both numb.

Adding to my weakness is receiving powerful intravenous antibiotic every day through a PICC line in my upper left arm. I had just about completed a six-week-long regimen of daily intravenous antibiotic for a blood infection and possible osteomyelitis (bone infection) in one of two fractures in my right ankle due to two falls in April 2023. However, due to osteomyelitis in my spine, my infectious-disease doctor added another six-week-long regimen.

(As an aside, both of my feet ache and are also numb due to continued neuropathy that started many years ago because of my diabetes. My surgeries may have exacerbated the symptoms in my feet.)

Many times, the pain in my back and in my legs is so unbearable that it prevents me from continuing both of my therapies, even while using pain medications. My two main pain medications are Percocet pills and Fentanyl patches, both of which are opioids.

Much of my pain is in the area of my incision in my back from my second spinal surgery, which was on October 6, 2023, and which took six (6) hours to complete: 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. This surgery involved the placement of titanium plates, titanium screws, and a long titanium rod affixed to my spine by my spinal surgeon due to osteomyelitis in three lumbar (lower) sections of my spinal bone. My spinal surgeon told me that my spine was "collapsing" and that I required this serious surgery immediately.

After my spinal surgeon completed his part of my surgery, my plastic surgeon closed my rather long incision in my back (34 centimeters long/13.3858 inches long) so that the metal pieces would NOT form bumps that stick out of my skin.

My first spinal surgery was on September 2, 2023, when I had an infection (an abscess) removed/cleaned out in one of my spinal disks in my lower back. It was discovered at that time that I had osteomyelitis in that area of my spine.

(*) I refer to myself as physically torn up because of these two surgeries, plus my three surgeries last year, from which I am still recovering: quadruple coronary artery bypass surgery in March 2022 and then two related chest surgeries in May 2022.