Yeah OK, I an’t no beauty but I have been sleeping.

And sleeping.

And sleeping.

and I am going to be sleeping some more.

I feel like someone slipped me a Mickey and I’m looking right at you Mr. Gabapentin 3 X a day.

Because when I am laying around on my narrow ass in bed I ain’t thrashing around, so I haven’t been taking the narcotics or the muscle relaxers.

Either way, I slept all day and fought for a half an hour to wake up enough to get out of bed and go take a piss.

I figured I’d post this update before I fall down again.

Hang in there, I’ll be back eventually.

crankier than ever.

See what a mess you made here?

And damn glad to be,

First off, I want to thank everyone for the well wishes and prayers.

There is zero doubt in my mind that they didn’t help, they actually helped immensely as it turned out the surgeons changed their plans at the last minute and it wound up they didn’t have to take the big poker and ram a tunnel from the right to the left side.

That would have doubled my hospital stay and recovery both.

They came up with a plan to go through my left groin with a thin wire up to the blockage, turn the wire somehow and go through between the inner wall and the middle wall of the artery and drop in a stent in front of the blockage, thus bypassing it. They then took the big metal poker and rammed a tunnel down my upper left thigh to just above the knee and installed an artificial artery down to the knee to bypass the blockage I had in my mid thigh on that side.

10 hours of surgery with 2 cardiovascular specialists and 2 units of blood.

Post Op was an absolute nightmare and I can only Thank God that I can’t remember a bunch of it right now.

Freezing, my teeth chattering uncontrollably and I was dying for some water but they wouldn’t give me any for what seemed an eternity.

Mercifully I passed back out several times but I did finally get some ice chips and sips of water while they waited to take me upstairs.

So I have 2, Four inch incisions being held together with some serious staples. I have massive bruising all down the inside of my forearm from all the needles and blood collecting ports. I also have massive bruising around my inner leg and around my waist on the right side and all they did there was stick a wire in to help with the other side. Even my Junk has bruising all over.

My upper, inner left thigh is very swollen and it’s going to be one giant bruise here in a day or two.

But I’m alive and very grateful to be so.

The doctor is very pleased at the increased amount of blood flow all the way to my toes and inner ankle and although it took a few days, that nagging 24/7 ache I had at the outer shin muscle on my left side isn’t there anymore.

This whole thing isn’t some kind of cure all but if I can get around even a little better without being in pain all the time I’ll take it.

I can already see that there is going to be a long rehab and healing process but I’ll take that as it comes.

I am in no way up to speed so posting on my part is going to be sporadic and right now I would personally like to thank CederQ for posting while I was gone and keeping the lights on.

Ya done good buddy.

Thank You.

I will cut it short here, I am still pretty wiped out from all the activity getting out of there and then getting settled back in here at home. The Wifely Unit is all over it so I am going to hit Send and take a nap.

Feel like I got run over by a truck but I’m Still Kicking.

I’m groggy as hell, hurting am still in ICU

They are supposed to be moving me sometime later today to a regular room

They came up with a change of plans at the last minute and I was spared getting Shishkabobbed across the belly from one side to the other so that is good.

Maybe later I will be able to explain what they did.

Right now I’m doing good just typing this out on my phone

Thanks for the prayers and well wishes.

Aaaand I’m out again.

Phil

I went in Monday at 7:30 to have several Ultrasounds done before the surgery. Lower abdomen and both legs.

The original plan was to have them ram a tunnel across my lower belly, thread an artificial artery through from one side to the other and splice the right side upper femoral artery to below the blockage they couldn’t get out on the left side and then ram another tunnel from the left side under the new splice down my thigh and reconnect to the Femoral artery just above the knee. The Untrasounds revealed a new narrowing in the artery just below the left knee so now plans have changed. I am going in this Friday at 7:00 for check in and they added another surgeon. They are going to do some Angioplasty on this newly discovered narrowing and put a stent in just below the knee so when they splice in from above there will be better blood flow down to my lower left leg which is the whole purpose of this surgery in the first place. They figure 6 hours even with 2 surgeons and probably 2 months to recuperate. Myself, I think it’s going to be longer because I m still not 100% healed up from the surgery last December.

It’s like I told CederQ, the only way forward is through and it is what it is. I am very much hoping that this does some serious good this time.

All prayers and well wishes are very welcome and I will be back as soon as I can as I will be taking my phone and laptop with me.

Take a few minutes and go check it out!

Because at this point I would only be looking for the things that really mattered.

I just found out that I am going back in on the 25th and it’s going to be very invasive.

A six hour procedure. They are going to open up both sides of my groin, take a large hollow spike with a removeable solid center and ram a tunnel through my lower belly so they can run a tube through from one side to the other. They jam through then pull the solid part out and thread the tubing through the hollow metal tube. Then they are going to connect the right side artery to the left side artery just below the blockage that she couldn’t dig out last December.

After that, she is going to take the same instrument and ram another tunnel from the left side down through my left thigh to just above the knee and put another tube in. Then she is going to connect just under the new tube on the left side to the femoral artery just above the knee to bypass the blockage in my left thigh.

All of this is to try and get more blood flow to my lower left leg to try and stop the 24/7 pain I have now in the muscle on the outside of my lower left leg. The one that is like having shin splints in all the time now. It’s been aching 24/7 for some time now and it hurts like a sonofabitch when I have to walk and I mean even ten or fifteen feet at this point.

I have a cane now to lean on because I have to stop and let the blood flow catch up all the damn time. This new shift I am on at work causes me to be on my feet 3 times as much as before because I am working alone

. She figures it’s going to be 2 months minimum to recover and I’m still not 100% healed up from the incision last December. Plus I have this giant wound on my left foot from trying to burn off a corn that is just killing me.

I haven’t had more than 3 hours of sleep a night for over a week at this point and my foot is fucking killing me as I sit here and type.

The surgeon changed up the pain meds I am on to 10 mg of Oxycontin which I am allergic to in higher doses along with 500 mg of Tylenol every six hours and it isn’t doing shit.

I am going to call her up and see about going back to what I was taking before but get a prescription for every 4 hours instead of twice a day because I am sick and tired of hurting all day and all night. If I can get enough in me to get it to let up then keeping it at bay is a lot easier. It’s just getting over that initial hump.

So I am hoping all this works and I can start being relatively pain free as much as possible and hopefully more mobile.

Next month will be 2 fucking years that I have been screwing around with the medical system over this and I am about fucking done.

I have my fingers crossed, this is going to be quite the procedure and all well wishes and prayers are going to be sincerely appreciated.

I haven’t even told all of my family about this yet and am just now putting it on the blog..

I just found out about all of this yesterday afternoon.

So as you can imagine, I’ll be Out Of Service for a couple of days at least right after the surgery, at least 4 or 5 days in the hospital and then bed ridden for a while at home until I heal up enough to be able to stand up and try walking.

I see morphine in my future.

What the hell is this for?

A couple of decent guesses in the comments where I found it.