Delicious Ambiguity: Erik's Surgery

As Kara noted in her post on Sept. 11th, I finally had surgery. Because 2 of the 3 damaged nerves were improving, they only operated on the axillary nerve which innervates my deltoid. In order to fix the axillary nerve, they took the sural nerve from my left leg and essentially transplanted it to my shoulder.

My left leg with a 14 inch incision, now devoid of a sural nerve

Anterior incision

Posterior incision

I must say again that I feel so fortunate to have two of the the world's foremost surgeons performing the operation and they both said afterward that it was worse than they had expected when they were finally able to visualize the nerves. Despite two MRIs from different institutions, the axillary nerve was actually ruptured (granted, it is very difficult to trace a nerve through an MRI). The doctors took some pictures, so I will better understand what they saw at my next appointment, especially because I was coming out of anesthesia when they were telling me about it. :)

The bottom line is that no matter how long we would have waited, it wouldn't have healed without surgery. On one hand, at least we know we did the right thing by operating, but on the other hand, it sure would have been great to know that sooner. However, had we known that the axillary nerve needed surgery earlier this summer, I'm sure they would have operated on the other two nerves, which would have been pulling the trigger too early. It's interesting how all the details come together.

Speaking of details, they took 30 cm (~12 inches) of my sural nerve and used it to bridge 10 cm (~4 inches) of my axillary nerve. "That doesn't quite match up," you might say. Well, the sural nerve is smaller in diameter than the axillary, so they divided the 30 cm into 3 pieces and glued those together prior to suturing them end-to-end to the axillary nerve -- true microsurgery!

The hope is that the radial and suprascapular nerves will continue to heal and the goal is that my axillary nerve will allow me to at least lift my left arm, but it will always be weaker and I probably won't be able to lift it all the way over my head. Unfortunately, it will be a few more months before we see if this is going to work at all, and it will be 2 years to see how much improvement I get. I guess that's one thing I'm getting good at -- playing the waiting game.

5:45 am report time. Waiting in the pre-op area with 14-day-old Torsten.

GOOD LUCK!

After surgery, recovering from IV anesthesia (much slower recovery time than inhaling gas).

One-armed man going home.

Fat foot! It's still swollen, but not that bad and no ace wrap.

Kara thought it was funny that she came out of the dentist to find Torsten and I both asleep in the waiting room. Pain meds, new baby, busy house must have all caught up to me.