Well by the time some of you have read this post I’ll have already had my surgery! After a very long wait I got the call yesterday to say that tomorrow is going to be the day. Nothing like getting right to it!!!! What you won’t get from me however is any form of complaint, I’ve been waiting for what seems like forever and now it’s go time. The reality has set in and now the nerves are kicking in. There’s a long road to recovery ahead but this is the start of that next step forward. I’m looking forward to putting the past year behind me and starting to move forward again.

Even though I’ve been through this surgery before I keep going over it in my head. I’m trying to keep my mind off it but that’s kind of hard seeing as this all happens tomorrow morning. At this time tomorrow I’ll be hopefully be getting more pain relief from the CRPS. Even though I have to get through all the surgical pain first! I’m looking forward to putting the long wait of last year behind me and starting to move forward again. I’ve had to go through a lot with these implants but I believe in them and that they work as a way to control pain. If I didn’t then I wouldn’t be going through all of this. When I look at the relief I was getting before the implant shifted in my neck it was all very worthwhile doing. It allowed me to get a quality of life that I was lacking!

What do they do during surgery to put in the implant? The surgery to put in a neurostimulator is done in two parts. The first is done while your awake, as you need to be able to tell them where your feeling the sensations of the stimulator when it’s turned on. So they start out by giving you some heavy duty drugs to make you go to your happy place! They then go in through your back and insert the wire that has the electrical lead that goes into your spine. The area they go in order to stimulate my left hand is in the area of C3 or C4 which is at the base of your neck. Once they get the lead into the perfThe ect spot through a series of tests and you telling them where you feel the sensations they move on to the internalization of the battery. This is the more evasive of the two parts and so it’s also the part where you get to sleep! It excites me because with my CRPS sleep is very broken, and so I know with the use of modern medicine I’ll get a nice sleep I don’t normally get!

The internalization is the part of the surgery that is pretty hard on a person’s body. They tunnel the wire from where it comes out of your spine to wherever you’ve chosen to have the battery placed. In my case the battery sits in my left clavicle so the wire has to get from the middle of my back to there. It’s a long ways to travel and I wouldn’t want to be awake for that. It’s always fun waking up to find ice packs placed in the middle of my back and in the region of my upper left chest to bring down the swelling. Yes! It’s a lot to go through but when thinking about the other options I have, it makes the decisions in deciding to go ahead with the surgery a whole lot easier in deciding.

Tomorrow the long road to recovery begins but so does a new chapter in this book! The hill I’m about to climb is very steep and takes a lot of mental toughness but the rewards will be great. In my case the stimulators work really well to even out a lot of the flare ups that one can get but I also understand that for some that they don’t work. I always tell people that if your considering one of these implants to give it a try because what other options are open to you?

For those of you who are Canadians I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving! Yes this weekend we were suppose to be going to the lake to enjoy time with the family and an amazing meal. How that all changed with one phone call! Well it’s time to get a little shut eye before the big day tomorrow so I’ll talk to all of you soon.