A Successful Procedure

At 4:30 our pal the orthopedic surgeon showed up in the waiting room, still in his scrubs and shower cap, and told Mickey’s mom, Susan, and me that Mickey was fine and that the whole procedure had gone as well as it could have gone. In addition to fusing L5 to L4 and L4 to L3, he had also, after seeing everything live and in person, fused L3 to L2 (he’d told Mickey last week that this was a possibility.) The additional fusion would not, he told us, cause an appreciable reduction in Mickey’s mobility or flexibility. In fact, once he’s healed, his movement will be less restricted than it currently is by pain and muscle spasms. The only downside of this I see is that he may have to cross “joining Cirque du Soleil” off his to-do list.

Beth Israel’s post-op visiting policy is to allow two loved ones per patient to visit in recovery for about ten minutes, every two hours on the half-hour—12:30, 2:30, etc. We’d missed the 4:30 viewing (and anyway, as the orthopedic surgeon blithely mentioned when he first came down, “they’re still sewing up the skin,” which frankly kind of grossed me out), so after such a long day it was a very long two hours for Suze and me to wait until 6:25 when we could go upstairs. But go we did, and there our boy was, tubed and clamped about everywhere you could put a tube or a clamp, but happy to see us, and happy that the procedure was a success and, more importantly, over. He already had the self-administered, no-more-than-every-six-minutes pain pump, which he used with gusto. All things considered, he looked great. The wit was intact. When I told him they’d done the additional fusion, he asked “Is it included?” And as the older man in the next bed, only about three feet way but mercifully separated by a curtain, moaned loudly in a haunted-house kind of way, Mick muttered “Dude, if you can’t take the pain, don’t have the surgery.” This, of course, was followed by a few choice Ows! on Mick’s part, and a couple of pumps in vain of the pain button.

They’ll keep him in recovery for a while, possibly until tomorrow, and the next destination will likely be step-down care, before he lands in an actual room. I’m pretty sure he’s not going to feel as good tomorrow, or even the next day, as he felt this evening. But it is done, and it went well, and now he just has to work on resting and healing.