Surgery Part II

Well, I didn't get out a pre-surgery post like I'd intended. To fill everyone in, I had the bar from my pectus excavatum surgery removed this past Friday. It had been inside me for just over a year, and had gotten very uncomfortable. Most people that have a Ravitch procedure as I did don't have to keep the bar in for quite that long, but my case was a nasty one, and there were signs I wasn't healing correctly (and I wasn't). My doctor decided it was time to have it out, and to go in through my original incision site to do some bone grafting. This was due to the "clicking" and "crunching" I had felt through the entire year, which I've described on this blog. What we thought was causing it, and usually is the case, was a rib or two being loose- not having attached properly to the sternum after the original surgery. This does happen to a small percentage of pectus repair patients. In my case, when they x-rayed and opened me up Friday, they discovered that the movement and discomfort was happening because my sternum was still broken! Yeah, it never healed from having the chunk of it removed in the first surgery. So, it received a whole bunch of bone grafting along with a rib or two, and I now have two permanently screwed in titanium plates holding my sternum/ribs together. It feels wonderful not to have movement going on in my chest where it shouldn't be any longer. I was beginning to feel like a whiner before this last surgery, as I was always uncomfortable, but now that I know my sternum was broken the whole time I think I did pretty well.

Everything is still pretty swollen and sore, and I don't know what it will look like in the long term, but feeling solid again is great, and I'm hoping that was the last time a surgeon will have to rip open my chest.

I will have an appointment in a couple weeks to discuss how I'll need to go forward with recovery. At this point I don't know what my restrictions will be, but it doesn't sound like I'll be riding or climbing for a several months again. I knew that was coming, so it's not so bad, but it kind of sucks to have to return to being weak after just starting to get back to my old self. I'll live. There will be plenty of fall day hiking and fresh air even if I can't ride.

Anyhow, I won't get too long winded as I'm not completely following all my thoughts due to percocet. More from me later...

I kept the bar. :)