First follow up Apointment on December 4, 2007

Hello again,

In the weeks before my first follow up appointment I was both nervous and excited. I was mainly nervous about the trip to Edmonton and how painful the trip would be. I learned on the way home from the hospitaly that every little bump on the road hurts! Surprisingly the trip to Edmonton wasn't as bad as I was expecting and it was so nice to get out of the house! I hadn't been really anywhere since before the surgery. I wasn't really nervous about the appointment itself and was basically hoping that it would go well and my specialist would give me the go ahead to lift heavier objects. I had been told that I could not lift anything above 5 lbs for the first 6 weeks. One of the few problems that I had to discuss was terrible pain in my hip that was keeping me from being able to walk which I learned was bursitis and he needed to give me a cortisone shot. I had thought the pain in my hip had to do with my back so I kept trying to walk on it only to make it incredibly inflamed and quite warm to the touch.
I don't even really remember how the first few minutes went and what we discussed first but I remember him looking at my back and then telling us that the rod had come loose on the bottom and that news hit me like a ton of bricks. I wasn't expecting and hadn't prepared for complications. He told us that I had two options-wear a brace for a couple of months or surgery to fix the rod. Surgery again? Of course I didn't want that so I wanted to try the brace first which he agreed was a good idea. The only issue was that we needed to get the brace immediately and it was already late and we had already had a very long day. But I didn't want surgery if I didn't have to so we did what we had to do. The place that my specialist sent us to made my brace in record time supposedly so that we would not have to come back to Edmonton to pick it up. I think it took him a couple of hours vs a couple of days. We were finally headed home by about 6pm I think. It was a very very long day! We ended up having to travel back to Edmonton though b/c the brace was too long and would dig into my abdoman and thighs when I sat down. We needed to get it trimmed and bent outwards. After that it was a little more more comfortable-well as comfortable as a brace can get which is not great-trust me.