Thursday, July 9, 2009

Needing lots of prayers

I write tonight to ask for some strong prayer. As I mentioned in my last post, Dr. Davis, the orthopaedic surgeon I saw at Vandy, did recommend surgery and my original surgeon in knoxville throught as a diagnostic, i should try traction first. I have been back in physical therapy for the past 2 weeks, 3 days a week. My physical therapist has done manual traction and today i was put in traction using the machine. Traction does help relieve the pain as do other things they do at PT but the relief is temporary....lasting minutes to hours after an appointment. I had decided last week that I wanted to go ahead and get on the surgery list since Dr. Davis's wait for surgery is about 6 weeks out so i figured it would be good to just go ahead and get on the list that way once i did PT for 3 or 4 weeks I could decide about surgery but I would have already gone through most of the waiting period. I went to physical therapy this morning and I talked to my therapist at length. She said there are lots of exercises she wants me to start but cant yet because my pain is still not under control. So she is limited to what she can do till my pain gets calmed down. I heard from the ortho clinic today and my date for surgery was put in the computer as August 19....6 weeks away. I asked to be put on the cancellation list. If there is a cancellation, the Dr. considers me a good candidate for short notice surgery since I am other wise healthy. The huge concern about waiting that long is my job. As of right now, I have been out of work for 3 and a 1/2 months. It is vanderbilts policy that if you are on a leave of absence for 6 months, you are terminated. To get my job back I would have to go back through the whole interview process. I would loose my insurance, tuition benefits, etc. This is a terrifying thought for me. So with this in mind, I sent an email to Dr. Davis and his nurse practitioner about this dilemma. Well I just checked my email and I had an email from Dr. Davis saying he would check into getting surgery moved up and a second email from his nurse practitioner saying they may have a cancellation next wednesday. So in a matter of hours I have gone from the thought of having surgery in 6 weeks to thinking there is a possibility I could have a major operation in 6 days. While I feel that surgery is the right thing to do, I am scared. I know more now then I did the first time i had surgery about the risks and stuff since I have been a nurse for 2 and a half years. I will find out Monday for sure if I will have surgery on wednesday. Harrison and I are going home to knoxville this weekend so my family and I will talk about all this. I just really need some prayers right now about this whole process. I will definitely update if I do in fact have surgery next week. Pray hard. Thanks.

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