…Two Weeks Later

Two weeks ago  I was lying in my hospital bed, probably asleep, tightly clutching my morphine button. I still miss that button, to be perfectly truthful. It was a wonderful thing.

Anyway! To get back to the point, I’m now just over two weeks post-op. Instead of lying in a hospital bed… I’m lying on the sofa in the living room. Things have changed a lot in the last couple of weeks.

I realise I haven’t really posted since I came home, but that is mostly because there hasn’t been anything too exciting to post about. In terms of recovery, I’m doing very well. My back seems to be healing like it should, and I’m slowly cutting down on pain-meds. I’m still getting tired very quickly, though, which is basically the only thing stopping me from going out and doing everything as I normally would. Even after something really easy and simple, like brushing my teeth, I have to lie down for ten minutes. I’m finding it a bit frustrating, even though I know that it’s fairly normal in this stage of recovery. I’m pretty sure that this exhaustion is mostly a side-effect from the Tramadol which I’m taking, so hopefully once I’m completely off that I’ll start to feel like I’ve got a bit more energy.

I’ve been kept company while I recover, too. Both the cat and the guinea pigs have been very obliging in that regard (although not at the same time, fortunately!).

I went to the GP last Friday to have my dressing changed, and everything looked good. As per instruction, Mum took that dressing off today, and so now I only have steri-strips covering the scar. Apparently we’re just meant to let those come off in their own time, which should take a few weeks. The scar is looking good, and Mum took a photo today which I’ll put up now.

One “side-effect” of scoliosis surgery is a gain in height. This makes sense when you consider that during surgery the spine is not only straightened, but also untwisted. I gained five centimeters (about two inches) in 7 hours, which is really pretty awesome. Mum measured me the day before I went into hospital, and then again when I got home. The funny thing is, when Mum measured me the first time, I’d actually lost some height from the last time she’d measured me (which was in February). That also makes sense,though. Because my spine had curved and twisted so dramatically in the months in between, I quite easily could have shrunk a little. Here’s a picture of those three different measurements.

I’m now the slightly awkward height of 180 cm (nearly 5′ 11″). It’s a bit weird being this tall all of a sudden, but I’m slowly getting used to it. 🙂

That’s pretty much it, I think! I’ll try not to leave such a big gap between this and my next update. (: