TMI Nurse Health Educator, “Becoming Bionic Boaz”

Let’s get right to the meat and potatoes of things. Surgery was a success; my great neurosurgeon Dr. Brian Gantwerker once again was awesome! Now comes the long, slow and yes, painful road to recovery.

Knowing how unpleasant hospitalizations can be, I’ve tried to take photos with everyone popping their head in; so although I’m in plenty of pain and got only an hour or two of sleep last night, this post might come across like an office party! Each pic will explain who’s who, if you take the time. (Dr. Ellie Goldstein paid me a great visit but we couldn’t get a photo in since I was interrupted by another doctor visit.)

Pre-op was coincidental for a few reasons:

1. Same pre-op nurse as last time, Savannah Arroyo, who used to work on my unit.

   

2. Same surgical nurse as last time, Amber, also used to work on my unit.
3. Old friend from high school David Oved was there with his mom in pre-op, and told them “I have a friend who works in this hospital named Boaz Hepner”. Due to HIPAA that nurse awkwardly didn’t know how to answer; but since I had told my nurse she could publicize my being there, she was able to say, “he’s a few feet away in Room 12”! Wow.

   

When I was seconds away from going under, I told a story to the surgical team, and it’s a bit crass and risqué, but I feel like telling it now, and you’ve been warned:

My first surgery was in 2003. Phenomenal ENT at Cedars named Dr. Martin Hopp (I highly recommend him). It was for a deviated septum, with no cosmetic alterations (aka it wasn’t a nose-job). As he was standing over me and they were starting my anesthesia, I distinctly remember being a wiseass, by saying, “Dr. Hopp! Don’t forget what we discussed! Cher’s nose, and Madonna’s tits!” In my final two seconds of consciousness I saw him guffaw, and due to the drugs I was on, panic set in as I thought, “WHAT IF HE THINKS THAT WAS REAL?!”

I then remember waking up super groggy, and the FIRST thing I did was grab at my chest, and feel extremely relieved he didn’t mess with my perfectly sized man-boobs.

Anyway, this time I woke up with no need to pat down my chest, but certainly there was immediate pain in my incision on the front of my neck, as expected. I was supposed to get a bed in Orthopedics but they didn’t have one available; so I was sent to my own Med/Surg unit, where I am typing this in a room where I have treated dozens of my own patients over the past nine years.

My care team has basically been copied and pasted from my past surgery, because they are each the best in their respective fields, and they know me as more than just my diagnosis, they actually KNOW me. And they are in no particular order:

Dr. Jennifer Linehan, urology

Lenna Martyak, Gastroenterology

Dr. Gerald Sacks, Pain Management

Leila Karimpoor, Hospitalist (not the same as last time as hospitalists are assigned based on who’s there at the time, but she is in the same group as Schehrezade Khan who was mine last time).

Now let’s bullet point an assortment of facts about my situation so far:

-I have a catheter again, but this time it’s planned. It was inserted while I was under, so I avoided that sadistic act; but now I’m dealing with the incessant torture of it remaining inside my urethra until Friday or Saturday. So I may come home with it again, depending on my discharge date.

-I’m on a cocktail to hopefully avoid me getting another ileus, but needless to say nobody will consider letting me leave without a BM. (Side note: I always crack up when I see Bar or Bat Mitzvah shortened to BM on texts or social media. “Had such a great time with Kevin’s BM this weekend” will never NOT make me laugh out loud.

-My stupid insurance company endlessly denied my doctors trying to prescribe me Relistor or Movantik, which counter the constipating effect of narcotics. So to work around this I’m getting Relistor from day 1 here in the hospital, and I already have samples lined up for when I discharge home. To beat the system you gotta think ahead sometimes.

-Pain. This incision is more painful than the one in my stomach (for my lumbar disc) last time, but again this was expected. It’s right in front of my neck where literally every sound I verbalize and every time I chew or swallow, IT HURTS. IT STINGS. INCESSANTLY. So note to self: Try not to let Jason Voorhees or Freddy Kreuger slash my throat, once is more than enough thank you very much. UCCH.

-Speech Therapy is VERY important in this case, because, duh, my neck/throat literally have an incision. So Jessica Kaplan, who took photos of me with others but was too camera-shy to get in any, is doing my speech therapy, and so far so good. While it does hurt to swallow, she immediately liked that I don’t sound hoarse or gurgly, a good sign apparently. And we were able to get me safely eating soft foods, though they do get caught in there. The thing she warned me to watch out for is that the swelling can get worse over the course of the next few days; so we will have to reassess my ability to swallow both tomorrow and ideally Thursday, if I’m still here.

-Physical/Occupational Therapy was thankfully anti-climactic and successful. To be clear, I’ll need a whole lot of PT for both my original lumbar surgery and now this cervical one, but everything is tricky….normally at this point in my lumbar recovery I’d be doing PT, but most of those exercises could negatively interfere with my cervical recovery. So in large part, it will be at the 12 week mark when all of my PT can finally happen. Until then it will be in dribs and drabs based on what my doctor deems safe and appropriate.

But the great news again was that I was able to do what they needed of me today, which was simply being able to get in and out of bed, walk, and even use stairs. This was much more difficult last time, so this is a huge relief. I’ll keep using the walker to help with my catheter, but once that’s removed I have a feeling I’ll be done with my walker and cane – hooray!

-Another huge relief is that the typical neck surgery would involve my not being allowed to turn my head or even sleep on my side for six long weeks. But Dr. Gantwerker made my day when he reassured me that with his particular procedure and equipment, it’s totally fine for me to do that. Considering I ONLY sleep on my side, this is MASSIVE!

-Adi now has a 102 degree fever after catching Natalia’s stomach bug literally an hour after kissing me goodbye in the car. To clarify, I spent the ENTIRE weekend washing my hands each and every time I touched anything Natalia touched. We seemed to be out of the woods on Sunday evening. Monday morning comes, Adi is dropping me off, kisses me goodbye in the car, and not even one hour later she’s calling me in pre-op, telling me that she’s puking and feverish. NO!!!

As crappy as this obviously is for Adi, and it obviously is, here’s the far more scary aspect: I’ve just had a neck incision, with a new C6/C7 disc replaced. Thankfully it’s a stable enough material that he’s confident IF I start vomiting, it shouldn’t damage it; BUT it would be unbelievably painful, just truly awful in a way I don’t even want to imagine. I mean right now if I even mildly cough it hurts 9 out of 10, I can’t even imagine what vomiting would feel like. I would want to be unconscious. When I updated my GI about this she said it may be best to insert an NG tube into me to remove the vomit if this occurs. I can’t even tell you how miserably nervous I am about every piece of this potential scenario. All I can do is wait and see because I likely wouldn’t know until sometime Thursday if it will hit me. And I might be home by then.

Oh, and I also can NOT be going home to a house with a feverish wife. So this “stomach bug that’s apparently going around” per our pediatrician, is proving to be a large looming factor right now.

Anyway, those are the bullet points, but I always make myself finish off on positive notes, so here we go…I am alive. I did not become paralyzed from my upper spine surgery. I am surrounded by brilliant doctors who are visiting me and texting me daily. My cervical disc is now made of ceramic and titanium, and my lumbar disc is now made of titanium and plastic. I am becoming the Bionic Man. I will not set off metal detectors, and I can still go in an MRI, (two tidbits that you may find irrelevant but I find cool). And it’s nice (and surreal) being a patient on my own unit, surrounded by dozens of colleagues and friends.