Just a quick update - not to much going on new atleast - on a none medical front myself representing APF (american pain found), Advanved Pain Mngmt and American Society for Pain Management Nursing-WI have secured the Sept Pain Awareness Proclammation which is good news for our sept ventures and for overall awareness. I also have a couple other projects going on w APF as well as we are in the process of arranging plans for the Oct-central and Eastern conference in Albany, NY yearly training.
On to medical things - this week I see Oral surgery for wisdom teeth removal tomorrow which thankfully this shouldnt be complicated as it is all fully out and so all 4 teeth should be fairly easy. In fact I am driving myself to and from the appt as the surgeon and I agreed we wanted no sedation and only local w/this due to the airway issues and my endocrine dr agreed to just let me increase the daily cortisol replacement but w/oral meds for the next 3 days and then back to normal.
I also happen to have scheduled a 6 month fup with my endocrine dr for this fri so good timing I guess. Her nad I always talk about the impact of the increased intracranial pressure on the endocrine levels/issues (she is a big believer that atleast some of the endocrine hormone issues are/where caused by un-diagnosed hydrocephalus that went on for some period of time. In the past we had been able to document increases and decreases in the various hormone levels w/these headaches/shunt malfunctions and so it will be curious to see what levels show this time.
Otherwise it has been exactly 4 weeks or a month since the surgery and here is a brief update on where soem of the things are at:
I have been experiencing foot numbness especially when sitting on chairs where my feet are not touching the floor/a flat surface and in my L foot I cont to have numbness at the bottom of my foot and really I can only tell this bc of water temperature (when water touches other surfaces it is much warmer then when it touches this foot or even difference from L foot to the R foot temp wise and same goes for the top of my thigh and down the side of my L leg. I cont to walk w the cane but this to has gotten easier and pain overall comes and goes but is more of a neuropathic feeling than it is actually pain and muscles tighten up and then get really painful quite frequently on L side and all throughout + below incision/above buttocks. Bowel and bladder seem to actually be improving a bit - definitely is slow but this is the first week I feel like there is a little improvement and while this still comes and goes as far as the improvement atleast it has been coming and going!
There is still some swelling at incision site/around the very direct incision site like a fluid collection but not as big as it was right after surgery and there also conts to be swelling above buttocks in lumbar-sacral spine area which all taken together does make sitting/laying on those areas uncomfortable but this has improvement atleast some since even 2 weeks ago so that has been nice. I mostly sleep on my right or left side.
Related to these things I see GI in august as well as the neurogenic urologist (see last weeks note for that appt with mid-level provider) at UW to and the week before these appts have urodynamic testing. July there are other things going on un-related to the surgery and cont work on projects for APF and hopefully more time w my nephews given ive not seen either as much as usual in june.
I'll try to update soon,
Erica
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