My Single Mom Life

By soon, I mean 4 months from now.
Where do I even begin telling you about my day?
Let's start with the traffic from hell first.

We had to take I-75 to the Crosstown expressway, over to Howard. If we had known better, we could have just taken 275 and saved ourselves the trip from hell.
We were nearing our exit to hop on the crosstown when traffic came to a dead halt.
On the freaking bridge at I-75 and Riverview.
We thought this was the accident that had everyone stopped.
A white SUV had plowed into the back of a red car, totaled their front end, front wheel, and leaking all the cars fluids onto the highway.

See the white SUV and then the red car up ahead? Yeah, we thought that was the accident that held us in a parked position for an hour and 20 minutes.
This is what we and every other driver did that whole time, completely confused on why traffic was still stopped.
We parked our cars, shut off our engines, and got out to look around.

But this was the real accident that held us up.
A dump truck over turned and hit a jeep., or hit the jeep then turned over.
The entire drivers side is gone from the jeep, we saw a Bayflight copter come down, then take off again. No news on injuries yet.

I called my doc's office about 10 minutes till my appointment, after we had already been parked in traffic for nearly a half hour to tell them I would be late, no clue when I would make it. There were two accidents from what we could see, and we were stuck on the bridge with nowhere to go, bumper to bumper traffic in all the northbound lanes.
It sucked.
Major suckage.

So we finally get to my doc's office a full hour and a half later than my appointment, and they did the usual x-rays.
My fusion is solid (this is awesome news!) at the bottom, the location that fusions are most likely to fail if they are going to, but my left iliac screw, (the giant 4 inch screws that were put in my hips to stabilize the whole contraption) is broken.
We have some options, we can leave it in there if taking it out is going to cause me more problems, but it will most likely be coming out in about 4 months time.
Doc M. is going to a huge conference with other spine specialists next month and he's once again presenting my case. I have one of the longest fusions done, one of the longest surgeries performed. These other specialists are already aware of my case and are wanting a follow-up.
During this conference, he's going to talk to these other specialists to see what their opinion is on taking out the iliac screws.
Many of them have done it before, but because of my age and other factors, taking it out may not be in my best interest. It could cause me more pain in the future, but leaving it in could cause more pain too.
This screw that is broken is in my left hip, the hip I am always complaining about, the one that always hurts, the one that when it rains puts me in bed with a heating pad and doubling up on pain meds.
I guess we now know why it's been hurting that bad huh?
After my surgery in February 06', we discussed these screws, he said he could take them out in 4 years if they were still causing me pain, but we are looking at taking them out now, at the 2 year mark.

I'm really not sure how I feel about this.
It's another surgery, another recovery, another hospital stay.
I told Doc M. if taking them out is really going to cause me excessive pain in the future, just leave them in and I'll deal with the pain. Eventually the bone will fuse over the broken screw, and it'll just be a constant sore spot like it is now.
I don't know if I want to deal with another surgery. I don't know if I can mentally handle it, or how it will affect my sons to once again, have me in the hospital for a period of time, having to take care of themselves, shuffle back and forth between our own home and my sisters home during my stay.
And then the coming home and recovery issues again. I'm just really not too thrilled about the idea of taking them out. It's so much stress on my little family.

I asked him how it broke, did I do something wrong?
He said no, it's a stabilizer screw, this sometimes happens, but it did it's job. It held all the rods in place so the fusion of the sacral bones could happen, and it did.
I have a solid lower fusion all the way to S-1, and my upper area is fusing really well.
Not totally solid yet, but doing great, so my entire structure, T-3 through S-1, is doing excellent, but an iliac screw busted and we need to deal with that.

Is that the cause of my white cells being so high?
He doubts it, so I will be having what is called an Indium scan.
They remove some white cells, "label" them with radioactive stuff, inject them back in and watch where they go, to see if they can find the infection, or if there even is one.
If there isn't, the next step is the infectious disease people. (fucking suck!)
I also have to have a CT scan done on the lower lumbar and hip region so they can get a better look at the busted screw.
I need to do these tests within the next two weeks.

Then we started our way home, taking 275 instead, and got held up on yet another bridge (the Howard Franklin) for 30 minutes for a completely unknown reason.
This kind of traffic bullshit happens every single time I have an appointment with Doc M.
I hate bridges to start with, and getting stuck on them in bumper to bumper gridlock, is a nerve wracking nightmare for me.

So yeah, that's how my day was.
We obviously didn't make it back early afternoon like we needed to.
I'm kind of like in an ah fuck, not again, please not again mood.
I really don't want another surgery, but I don't want the pain to get worse if that's how it might end up, and I don't want them taken out if that will make it hurt worse in the future.
It's all in the hands of a group of spine specialists who are meeting next month.
If the majority say take them out, I'll be having them out, and going through a lot of this recovery shit again.
I don't really know how to feel right now.