Yes, I am extremely overdue in sending out an update. Six weeks and a few days later here it is. The four hours of surgery on 9/28 was successful. Whether the result will be the desired outcome is yet to be seen; that won’t be decided until I’m 3-6 months out from the surgery. It takes that long for the fusion to complete and the nerves to heal. Right now I’m able to walk 30-45 minutes at moderate pace without anything going numb, tingling, or causing agonizing pain. So I think it is looking very positive that I’ll be in that 15% category of making a full recovery. Please keep praying to that end!
To say I was naïve about what recovery would be like is a huge understatement. I was completely disillusioned. The first few weeks I could out-sleep any newborn. I didn’t expect to sleep so much. I wasn’t prepared for how fuzzy my brain would be with all the medication. I thought I would only need my mother to stay with me for maybe a week, she finally left me on my own after a month – and still comes over several days a week to help with chores and to drive me places. I was, however, anticipating the nausea from the medication. The first two weeks I was a puking machine; finally I was able to get a prescription anti-nausea which keeps it in control. But that is the only thing that went according to my expectations. All the books I piled together to read during the time have remained mostly untouched. Magazine articles were even too long. Instead, I watched a lot of TV. The HGTV channel mostly. It’s a bad thing to watch home shows that inspire you with projects while being cooped up at home and unable to do a single one. Even so, I have really enjoyed being at home and indulging in my natural inclination to be a bit of a recluse. It was nice to disconnect from our hyper-connected world, thus, part of the reason why this update is so long in coming.
Physical therapy started a couple weeks ago and this past Monday I finally started noticing progress and improvement. I was ecstatic that I was able to do everything Damon told me to do – and without breaking down into tears from pain! We were both pretty happy about no tears. I’m on the road to recovery and while it is longer and much slower paced then I was anticipating, I’m very pleased with the progress I’m making. One of the hardest things to do is to sit in a chair for any length of time or bend forward (as in to get things in and out of the oven or shave my legs).
Thank you so much for all your prayers, notes of encouragement, and visits. I feel very blessed. To all those who have emailed me in the past six weeks asking after my health – thank you so much, I really appreciated it, even though I didn’t answer.
I am sort of starting to get back into the world at large, hopefully I will see you soon!
Cheers! Jennifer Streger
Cool! I'm proud of these pics!
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