Medical Musings: I am Wimp: Hear Me Whinge!

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

I am Wimp: Hear Me Whinge!

Forgive me for, or rejoice in, the uncharacteristic brevity, but I'm full of dope (Ultram ER) and, by the time you read this, on the way to surgery. Today an eminent orthopedic surgeon (a friend of mine refers to him dismissively as a "mechanic") will perform kyphoplastic magic on the compression fracture of my second lumbar vertebra.

How Kyphoplasty is Done

I haven't been able to do much of anything for the last month because of the pain, so I am delighted to be a "good candidate" for the procedure. The surgery itself will take only an hour, but I'll be trapped in hospital for about five hours. With any luck, by the weekend I won't need pain meds and will be able to sit in chairs again. Chairs are especially important to me in that if I can't sit, I can't play piano, AND THAT DRIVES ME CRAZY! Music is my safety valve, or has been, until recently.

Wish me luck.

5 comments:

SidJune 4, 2009 at 3:07 AM
Hey Lonnie,
Been reading your blog for a while now. Like your style, truth and hold nothing back attitude.
I'm from New Zealand, myeloma since 2001. If you want more www.supersidnz.blogspot.com
In the summer I grow tomatoes like you. The money maker variety about half the size of my closed fist. Just for you Lonnie about 5cm or 2 inches across. Also grow the little cocktail tomatoes for eating while I sit and watch the other vegetables grow.
I don't play the piano but my wife somtimes plays the piano on my ribs to find the one with the lesion in. Doh, ray, me, YEAH!
I wish you luck with the kyphoplastic magic and good health.
Sid
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LisaJune 4, 2009 at 2:18 PM
Good luck, Lon! May the mechanic work his magic on your spine, and may you feel much better soon!
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AnonymousJune 4, 2009 at 5:44 PM
Hey Lon,

I am glad you are able to do the Kyphoplasty. My Doug had it done twice in April (he had 5 fractures) and the relief was instant! Good luck with the procedure. I wish you well!
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Lon NesselerJune 4, 2009 at 7:45 PM
Pain almost gone! Later in the day, after the surgery, and emergency PB&J, and icing down the lumbar region, I drove to a UPS store to mail a package, had a "healthy" hamburger at a local SoCAL place (with a mountain of fries and a strawberry shake), and took my girlfriend to a store to buy nail polish and utensils for some weird female rite. Yay!
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SandyJune 7, 2009 at 9:17 PM
Delighted to pick up that you are feeling better already and getting involved in significant other activities so soon after the procedure... you go, Lon!
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About Me

I have multiple myeloma, a rare, incurable, universally-fatal blood cancer. The average survival in 1998 for the newly-diagnosed was three years with conventional chemo, five years with a autologous bone-marrow transplant. Through a combination of diligent study and miraculous luck, I'm in good shape more nearly fourteen years later.

I've had just about every treatment medicine has to offer: chemotherapy, autologous transplant, allogeneic transplant from a matched but unrelated donor (a MUD), and a donor lymphocyte infusion (DLI).

I started blogging just before I was scheduled to have a second autologous transplant in early 2009, but there was too much cancer in the marrow. I was devastated. By November, my tumor burden was astronomically high: I had run out of time.

So I gambled on the rare and dangerous allogeneic transplant from a matched but unrelated donor, which is when I began this blog in earnest, but after a month I couldn't blog because I had become so weak I couldn't lift my hands to the keyboard. I was hospitalized for nearly three months; nearly died three times; and I continue in recovery more than a year later. My wife was once told to make "final arrangements" for me.

I wanted especially to describe my struggle with fear. Fear often leads to bad medical decisions: its acid eats away ones quality of life. Fear leads to too much treatment too soon, or to treatment too long delayed. I hope to explain the tools I've developed to neutralize it. I am writing a book on the subject which I hope to finish before I'm financially destitute: who plans to retire at age 53?

Along the way I'll try to provide the context of my life inside of which these tools work. Also, I can't resist the occasional digression.

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Wednesday, June 3, 2009

I am Wimp: Hear Me Whinge!

5 comments: