(part 1 here)
I had a follow up appointment with an orthopedist on December 19th. After a little confusion as to what my actual appointment time was, I got in to see the doctor relatively soon after I was shown to an exam room.
After blood pressure and temp checks, the doctor came in to see me. He asked me why about how I fell, how bad the pain was (more than childbirth, less than pancreatitis), and took a look at the ridiculously large bruise that took over my left calf. As for the bruising, he told me that was normal in fall cases and that it was nothing I should be overly concerned about. Don’t do any unnecessary walking and rest it as much as possible, and if it did change, to contact the office right away.
Then we looked at the MRI of my back and the x-rays of my wrist from the ER. My wrist wasn’t broken, but he could see how that might have been misread in the ER. He categorized it as more of a mild sprain and cut off the ER cast (mad applause and cheering from inside my head, lol).
As for the MRI of my back, he explained that it could’ve been a whole lot worse, but the vertebra had maintained its height except in the area where it was compressed. He wanted an x-ray to confirm it.
So I’m shuffled off to the X-ray room, where I was asked to lay on a rather hard surface for them to x-ray. That was rather painful. Then the x-ray tech wanted to get another standing up, so I get up off the table in a considerable amount of pain (on a scale of 1-10, this was easily a 25…) and walk over to get the next image.
After that’s done, I go back to the exam room. The doctor comes in and we look at the xray, where he points out that no broken pieces of vertebra are in the spinal canal (the space between the vertebra and the spinal cord), and confirmed what he’d told me earlier about the vertebra maintained its height, and that as it healed, the compressed area would fill in with with new bone growth.
Then he told me it would take up to 3 months for it to heal completely. I guess I’m not traveling anywhere until at least March.
If then…*sigh*
We talked about the pain medication I was prescribed at the ER. The dozen pills I’d gotten were gone as of that morning, so he wrote me a new script for the same stuff, but at double the dosage. I’m to cut them in half so that they last until my next appointment with him on January 9th. I could take a whole one on days the pain was especially bad, but to take half per his instruction. If I needed a refill before my appointment, I had to actually come to the office so that a new prescription could be provided to me. I don’t think that will happen.
I took the script to the pharmacy (because it’s a class 2 narcotic, it can’t simply be called in), where I find out it was no charge on my insurance.
I took the first dose before I went to bed. This stuff is, as I told Jeff later, “AMAAAAAAAAAZING”! I could almost move normally. I also see why I should cut them in half, as it knocked. me. out. But i don’t know if the medicine did it, or that my catching Daniel’s cold did. I slept really well. I almost overslept the next half dose!
Three months til it all heals up…
This will be fun…not!
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I’m Stef, and this is where it’s @ !~
where it's @ !~ 