Unbelievable!
May is a crazy Month for us. As I am sure it is for you. We always have a lot going on. It’s the start of outdoors “handy project” season. Our deck needs to be stained and a bunch of boards need to be replaced. I am a gardening freak and there is a ton of work that needs to be done to get all the beds and pots ready at home and the studio. May ends with our 7th wedding anniversary on the 29th. We try to get away for our anniversary just to spend some Steve and Angela time. This year we are off to Disney for a week to relax and celebrate not killing each other for the past seven years. Mothers Day is also in there and this year Mothers has taken on new meaning for my family. Like I said it’s a busy month.
You know how life is just plugging along busy as ever and then something just sneaks up on you and slaps you in the face. Well that is just what happened to me. I will do my best to not confuse you as I tell this bizarre story of the past few weeks.
Mothers Day weekend went great. Our family dinner with my Mom was just about perfect. Mom had a good time and so did the rest of the family. Steve and I spent a lot of that weekend working on our deck at home. How I do love my handy projects especially when it involves power tools. We worked on replacing a bunch of the rotting boards on our deck. It’s not hard to do, it’s just hard work. Getting all those 20 year old nails out of the bad boards, you need to use crowbars and big hammers to make it all happen. After 3 days of doing that we were both sore and tired. We are way too old for that kind of hard work!
No problem, I have all week to recover before it’s time to get the pots and flower beds ready the next weekend. I was not bouncing back as fast as I thought and by the end of the week the pain in my neck and shoulder had not gotten any better. Actually it was getting worse. On Thursday I had a new symptom I was getting a lot of numbness in both my hands. I had been having some numbness over the past few months and I had been writing it off to carpel tunnel. I thought it was a good idea to get this new numbness thing checked out. So I called my buddy Dr. John Maltese and he was good enough to get me in the next morning to see him. He was pretty concerned that something was going on in my neck. I needed to get an MRI of my neck. He also sent me for an x-ray of my right ankle (I forgot to mention I totally wasted my ankle the week before from a Lazboy chair dismount. REALLY!!!) I made the MRI appointment for 6 am on Monday and then went about my weekend.
I had a lot of work to do over the weekend I had to get ready to plant 60+ flats of flowers the next week. All the pots and soil had to be ready for planting. I do love to garden (I have a bit of an obsession with flowers and gardening. Really I am like a crack addict in a greenhouse.) “Flower Day” that’s the day we every year to close the studio to do our planting at the studio and our house. It is a really fun and creative day when all of us from the studio get dirty planting all the flowers. It is just about my favorite day of the year. We always do that the Thursday before Memorial Day weekend.
Have I lost you yet? I am trying not to make this to confusing even though it is. So the weekend is over and on Monday I get up early and head over to ProvidencePark to get my MRI. No big thing, I have taken a Xanax ( I am not a huge fan of the small space) I know how the drill goes, I have had way too many MRI’s over the years. After the test I left there with a copy of the CD of the images of my neck. When I got home I put the CD in my computer and played amateur doctor and looked at the images of my neck. I have had many back and neck problems over the years (including 2 surgeries, I personally think that I am the president of the “shitty spine club”) and I know way too much about discs and the spine (I am not a doctor but I play one on TV) I did not like what I saw on the screen I had a disc pretty high up in my neck that did not look good.
First thing Tuesday morning (while I was working out, honest.) the phone rang. It was my buddy Dr. Maltese and he had the report on my MRI. Just as I thought it did not look really good. I needed to see a surgeon. Not great news but honestly I had seen that the day before myself. Well Angela being Angela has another really good friend who is a Neurosurgeon. A really good and highly respected Neurosurgeon, Steve Papadopoulos. Dr. Papadopoulos did my last neck surgery 11 years ago at U of M. One small problem though is now Steve and Penny now live in Phoenix. I am thinking in the back of my head that I trust Steve with my life and I would want him to operate on me if needed. So I overnight shipped the CD of my MRI to Dr. Papadoupoulos in Phoenix and went about my business for the next day until he got the MRI.
OK so now it’s Wednesday evening and I am at the hair salon getting my hair done and climbing the walls waiting for Dr. Papadopoulos to call me and tell me what is up with my neck. It was hurting me and I am sure the stress of the past few days was not making it any better. In my mind is all that is going on with my neck, what am I going to do about that and I have 68 flats of flowers to plant the next day and I am leaving on Sunday for vacation. My head was about to explode.
About 7:30pm on Wednesday while I was still at the salon with hair dye slimed all over my head I get the call I have been waiting all day for from Dr. Papadopoulos. I could tell by the tone in his voice it was not good news. (You know that tone your Dad used when you were in big doo-doo) That conversation is mostly a blur. However, I do remember him saying, “I NEEDED SURGERY SOONER RATHER THAN LATER”. Holy shit! Well if I needed surgery, I really wanted him to do it. I had to figure out how to get to Phoenix to make that happen. (Oh ya, poof there goes your vacation to Disney next week.) Dr. Papadopoulos wanted me to see one of his old partners at U of M for him to look at me. He was going to try and make that happen the next day.
So I get the gunk washed out of my hair and go home to my empty house. Not a great day for my husband to be on his first business trip with his new job. I don’t know how to describe how I felt except in a fog. A couple of hours later my phone rings and it’s Dr. Papadopoulos it was set for me to see his friend at U of M, Dr. Chandler Thursday afternoon. He also said that my neck was so bad there was no way I could fly. My fog now has been elevated to complete spinning. It’s time to try and get some sleep. (Ya, right!)
Are you still with me? I know this is a crazy story. I swear every word of it is true. I never have to make up stories; I am one of those people that wild, crazy, unbelievable, bizarre and funny stuff is always happening to.
After my very long, fitful and lonely night the phone rang at 7:30 am on Thursday. Now remember it is “Flower Day” my favorite day of the year and I should be all happy and excited. I really just wanted to get back in bed and pull the covers over my head forever! It was Dr. Chandler on the phone. He wanted me to get to his office that afternoon as early as possible and how did I feel about “getting this taken care of” the next morning? I thought, Oh God did he just say tomorrow? I have no idea what I actually said to him. Somewhere in all my babblings was “OK”. I knew it had to be done soon, Steve Papadopoulos trusts this man with his own life (a recommendation does not get better than that) and I sure as hell was not going on vacation with my husband. (That would be the husband who was in Traverse City on a business trip and needed to get home ASAP to take me to meet the Dr. who was going to operate on me the very next day and do all the pre-op stuff)
Let me tell you that the spinning in my head has now ramped up to a full blown out of body experience. I was going to get a pedicure on Friday not have major surgery. I was going to spend the weekend at the Ritz Carlton in Orlando not at the University of Michigan Hospital. There are no words that convey the total freak out I was in. Talk about one extreme to another, time of your life to life threatening, the “Happiest Place on Earth” Disney World to the University of Michigan Hospital. Freshly painted toes to ugly bruises all over my arms from my IV’s. Sunshine on my face to drainage tube in your neck. A complete flip-flop of what my expectations for what Memorial Day weekend was going to be for me. It was just unreal.
Back to my favorite day of the year (at least it used to be!) of course I could not lift a thing let alone climb around on my knees in the dirt to plant any flowers. I tried to plant a few boxes and pots and give somewhat coherent directions on what to do. I just was not into it this year. I was in shock! The weather was perfect and I was a zombie!!! Thank God for Rosa, Kim, my friend Deborah, my sister in law Dawn and our helper Johnny (I was together enough earlier in the week to hire us some muscle to help with the lifting). They did it all, beautifully without me. (I still feel like a kid that missed Christmas) I walked around in a haze and when Steve got home from his trip we had to get to the Hospital to meet with Dr. Chandler and do all the pre-op testing.
That afternoon at the hospital went very well. Dr. Chandler was a pleasure and I felt good about him doing the surgery. Everybody that waited for me to get there and do all of the paperwork and testing I needed could have not been nicer. It was set. I needed to be back at the Hospital at 7am the next morning for the operation.
Other than the total meltdown I had in the pre-op room before my surgery because no one could start an IV on me (evidently it was torture Friday at U of M, who knew?) I think that the insanity of the past week was coming down hard on me too. The surgery went very well just as planned. I was very well taken care of by Dr. Chandler, his assistant Dr. Lehmann, the great anesthesia department, the recovery room nurses and my amazing and wonderful nurse Marsha that I had overnight on Friday who was finally able to get my pain under control without me turning into Linda Blair from the Exorcist. My dear husband Steve was right there with me all the way. He simply could not have been better to me. I love you, honey.
For those of you medical types (or persons in the know or the wanna know). I had a “large disc herniation in the midline at C4-5. With severe central canal stenosis and cord edema.” (In other words it was nasty as all get out!) The surgery that I had was an “Anterior Cervical Discectomy and Fusion.” Dr. Chandler went in from the front of my neck, removed the disc and all the fragments of it, put in a cadaver bone to fill the space and screwed in a titanium plate to hold it all together. (That is after he removed the plate I had in there from the last cervical fusion I had in 1998.)
I came home from the hospital on Saturday afternoon and I have been doing very well. I am sore (everyday it’s better) and still kind of in shock. The worse part is the sitting around and doing nothing. I am really climbing the walls. I can’t drive for a week and I can’t lift anything heavier than a gallon of milk for the next month. That for me is torture. I am really trying to lay low and do nothing. Of course, when I am at home all I see is everything I want to do and can’t.
I didn’t write this for you to feel sorry for me. I wrote this as a continuation to the last blog post I wrote. You know how I said that you never know when your life is going to take a dramatic left turn and everything you know is going to change. Little did I know when I wrote that 2 weeks ago that I was talking again about my life and how it was going to take that dramatic left turn yet once again. I also wrote about how we need to stay in the moment and appreciate the simple things. You know, all the little stuff we get to do, the simple things. For those of you that can go to work today (I really wish I could) or do yard work, clean the house or go to Costco and buy all good stuff we all need. Go for it! Stay in your happy place and remember that all the stuff we all go through on a daily basis is not a problem. A problem is something that can’t be fixed. All the other stuff is regular old life, with all its usual ups and downs.
I know that the big man upstairs was watching out for me once again and that I have lessons in this that I am supposed to learn. I am so very thankful to the great Doctors (John and Steve, you ROCK!) and good friends I have that were looking out for me. I really appreciate my dear hubby who stayed strong for me and is taking great care of me. (In the coming weeks that care may include tying me up to keep me from doing stuff I am not supposed to do.) I guess I will just close this long, long post with one last thing, is anyone free to go to the movies or for lunch this week? Stay healthy and be well, until next time.
PS. I will be back at the studio after June 2 and the Dr. cleared me to be able to photograph as long as I don’t pick up any heavy stuff.
Comments
angela serra commented on May 27th, 2009
oh my gosh, I didn't know any of this was going on!!!I am happy to hear you are feeling better though. When you can drive, come over and we will sit by the pool for the day.. Let me know---I would love to catch up!!!!
Arthur Lionas commented on May 27th, 2009
As our mom's would say, "keria elaison!" Angela, our thoughts and prayers are with you. I'm not only inspired by your story but by how you remained so level-headed throughout the entire ordeal. It reminds me of a quote that I like to remind myself of every now and then: "If uncertainty is unacceptable to you, it turns into fear. If it's perfectly acceptable, it turns into aliveness, alertness and creativity." You transformed uncertainty into the latter. Nice work. I love you. Keep getting better. We've got a camp get-together soon. -Arthur
Bambi commented on May 27th, 2009
Hi Sweetie, First of all Happy Anniversary! and Second.. I am so sorry to hear you 've been in the hospital. Know I am thinking about you! xoxo Bambam
Sue Garrity commented on May 27th, 2009
Holy cow!!!!! And what's up with my brother that he didn't think to call us????? (unless, of course, it's another message erased by the message fairy at our house....) Take care sweetie--oh and don't worry about bringing a dish to pass for Nick's open house!!
Josh Hudson commented on May 27th, 2009
Glad you are ok Angela!
Mame commented on May 27th, 2009
Unbelievable! Your strength in God will get you through anything! It cannot possibly be 7 years since you and Steve married!! Your written story says you should also become a writer! Keep smiling Angela! Love Mame
Tim Carroll commented on June 1st, 2009
Sorry you had to go through that,good to hear you getting better.
Debbie Cox commented on June 3rd, 2009
Ang, I can't believe what I was reading. I'm glad your doing better, however as I'm writing this I have to say I'm in shock! I think I need to fly out to see you and maybe shop!!! LOL! love to you and Steve. Love Debbie and Barry
Beth Marshall commented on June 4th, 2009
WOW WEE Ang! Sorry you had to go through all this! You can always vacation later with no pain! Love ya!
Shawn Rockwood commented on June 5th, 2009
Hey Ang, So sorry to hear about your ordeal, and that you missed Disney! I would have been a volunteer for the flower crew in a heartbeat, had I known what was going on with you. I am so glad you are OK. I will come and visit you all soon when passing through. Love ya, Shawn
denise smith commented on July 2nd, 2009
ooohh... i've never done this before, but had to respond after reading this! (a little late, but that's me, right?) Aye..yiah yiah!!!!! what you've been through and missing Disney, too. I feel upset to read this, but I'm relieved to see that you are doing good now. See ya soonly. Denise
kathy nagy commented on August 1st, 2009
Omg Angela... I had no idea any of this was going on, as this is the first time I've been on your blog. You are such an amazing life-loving person, and this story is just one more example. So glad to hear everything turned out OK. All the best wishes to you for continued recovery. Hoping to see you yet this summer for the family portrait, before Michelle is off to college. Love and hugs to you and Rosa.
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