Stimualtor Removed

For a couple of weeks prior to the removal of the spinal cord implant, I hadn't felt very good. I felt achy all over. I thought I was having a huge flair up of my Fibromyalgia. On June 30th, I hurt all night long. My legs throbbed and I couldn't seem to get warm so I took a hot bath. By 6 am, I was in the ER. I was lucky as Bill Evans was the doctor working. I really test Bill. He took excellent care of me. After a few tests, we determined that my stimulator was infected. I was admitted to the hospital around noon. Dr. Hooley was notified. It was his surgery day and he scheduled me for a removal. His was booked all day so I was fit into the schedule at 11 pm. I can't even begin to explain how badly I ached all over. They couldn't give me enough pain medicine to control it. I shook all over. Brady and Jess came over to visit and sit with me and Dan. Brady and Dan gave me a blessing, I'm sure that's why things went as well as they did. Dana stopped by too, she was very concerned about me, bless her heart. Later, Danton and Ethan came up. I think watching me shake and moan in pain was too much for them to watch and they left. Every hour on the hour, they gave me pain med as my pain would increase in exactly one hour. I didn't think I could make it. At the end of the night, I was crying more than I wanted to.

But finally it was my turn for surgery. I threw up just before going into the OR. Shane Larsen was the anesthesiologist, and he took excellent care of me. He's so kind. Dr. Hooley said that where the battery pack was in my hip, the infection was huge and gushed out the minute he opened me up.

Once the implant was out, I felt 100% better. I had to stay in the hospital for 4 days while they grew the infection and see what it was. It turned out to be the good staph, if there's such a thing. I went home with a picc line for the next 30 days. The picc line turned out not to be a big problem and putting the antibiotics in was a piece of cake. The only draw back was that I couldn't swim. It just about killed me that summer not to be able to swim in my pool or go to Bear Lake. In August, I got to go to Bear Lake and swim a little.