I flew into Baltimore, MD with my mom and eldest sister to have my surgery
consultation with Dr. Edwards II. He was very informative. I don’t remember
everything Dr. E II told me, but he did provide a lot of information about the
pros and cons of my surgery. The pros being a full reduction is possible, less
chance of a further slip, return of normal trunk height and a few others. One
of the cons that he mentioned was there is a chance of neurological impairment
which would typically be weakness in the ankles and quadriceps muscles. In most
cases this is nonexistent, in some cases temporary and in rare cases it is
permanent. He explained how since my slip is so far, that I would need a three
part surgery, each done a week apart, consecutively.
So
we began talk about having my surgeries done in June but I need to talk to
Kaiser Perm (my insurance company) first to see if they would cover the
procedure. When we talked with Lisa, the surgery consultant, she warned us that
there was very little to no chance that Kaiser would cover anything. In the 10+
years she’s worked at Mercy Medical, she has never experienced any leeway from
Kaiser for anybody. So she wanted to make sure that we didn’t get our hopes up
too much but wished us the best of luck anyway. The original plan was to have
my surgery in June, but because we need to talk with Kaiser before we can set a
surgery date, it will probably be later in the year. Very bummed about that
because I want to get this fixed as soon as possible!! But I know I must be
patient a little bit more.
I've attached two GIFs that I recently made. The first one (green background) shows the full reduction that Dr. Edwards II would do, and the second (blue background) shows the vertebrectomy that Dr. Jenkins planned on doing. Just a small visual. :)
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