TMI Nurse Health Educator, “The Return of the Boaz: There & Back Again”

I’m truly getting whiplash, and it’s nobody’s fault, but I’m exhausted emotionally, physically, and badly need sleep…

Ok stop reading if you don’t want the detailed TMI because here we go…

Thursday night I set some good goals for myself to know I could get the hell home. Stairs, pee, and poop without medical intervention.

I worked with PT in the morning and did stairs using a cane.

I was able to pee 200ml with barely any hesitation and acceptable pain.

I was able to poop and although I needed a bunch of meds they were all oral meds and I wasn’t straining.

Ok I was on board with my great doctors to get the hell home, in time for Shabbat!

Adding to my great day, the Jewish Journal published a paper and digital interview with me, which was lovely!

Then, just as the wheelchair arrived, I saw my bare feet for the first time in days, and to my horror my left foot and ankle was highly swollen, which would be normal after surgery if BOTH were but just the one screamed possible DVT(!) My awesome doctor ordered a STAT Doppler to check and literally got them to do it within ten minutes, and she held my hand throughout (I was so scared I was silently in tears) and we cheered when the results were that it was nothing. Just occasionally your edema after surgery is asymmetrical. Phew!

Hugs and goodbyes, we got home for Shabbat. Up our stairs with my new cane, around our home with my new walker, Dale and Mark and Natalia (and Zero) welcoming us back.

After dinner and taking my meds, I was ready for my first good sleep in a week. But I woke up an hour later needing to pee and it came out slowly. Woke up another hour later, slower pee. From 9pm to 9am I slept between 30-60 minutes at a time, always waking up increasingly excruciating pain to urinate and it coming in dribs and drabs, like a leaky faucet. Never feeling emptied, the pain increasing. And also unable to fart or poop.

Shabbat morning I was texting my awesome doctors who were NOT EVEN ON CALL, but rather than just tell me to call someone else, stayed in touch with me ALL DAY advising me. First at home to try certain medications, then to go to the Emergency Room because I most probably needed a Foley Catheter (unfortunate but necessary) to give my bladder some rest. Dear friend Avi Sotonzadeh stepped up and coordinated with Adi’s parents to take care of Natalia for the day.

Sure enough, I ended up in the Saint John’s ER most of the day, and getting a Foley Catheter, and an intense bowel regimen to go home with because undoubtedly the pressure of my post-op ileus making my stomach super bloated and hard to move my bowels was not helping anything else.

So now I’m home again, with a catheter, a walker, and the next 3 days where I apparently need to get a damn enema, and since I likely can’t bend right now I’ll need my poor wife to do it. Next week I’ll go to the urologist, remove the catheter, and pray that the bladder has had enough rest that it can work normally on its own. There is just so much suck right now. But….and here’s the important part, this too shall pass. There is no reason medically this should be anything but a very temporary annoyance, even if it’s a huge one. The actual back surgery was successful. I’m walking, even if there’s lots of pain, I literally have an artificial disc and I’m walking on it. That’s AMAZING. And tonight our meal train begins, pizza just got delivered thanks to our friends Debbie & Ian Alda, and I pray that there’s nothing to wake me up during the night.

Oh, and want to know something extremely spiritually/religiously amazing? The day I woke up from surgery knowing I was alive and it was successful, I texted both Rav Yosef Kanefsky and Rabbanit Alissa Thomas-Newborn if there was an appropriate prayer or passage to read. The #1 thing they each suggested was Modeh Ani. So I said it. Cut to tonight, coming home from the emergency room, I opened my mailbox and do you know what I found? Look at the final photo I posted for the reveal…

So keep me in your thoughts and prayers, I’m annoyed, upset, in pain, but also extremely grateful, and that’s what I need to focus on. Please no armchair medical advice, I’ve got plenty from the professionals working my case. But I very much appreciate the kind messages, the prayers, the meal trains, and the making me useful at home with COVID/vaccine questions, which I can do just as easily with a catheter.