Medical Wonders

The end to an excruciating pain is in sight, the pain that wakes me up at night, convinces me to pull over on the side of the road in my car and scream, the pain that keeps me from clapping at most events (my wife does the clapping at Sounders FC matches). Its end is in sight! Tomorrow specifically – tomorrow is my day under the knife. No one is taking things out or swapping body parts, instead tomorrow I get yet another Achilles Tendon. I love the two I have, they keep me running pain free and happy as can be, I am really excited to have a third one because of how much I love the two I have. This new one will be in my left arm, acting as a bit of a pillow connected to the Radius so that the Ulna that is about an inch too short in my left forearm stops rubbing so much on the bone.

I haven’t really talked about any of my medical problems to anyone. Mostly my wife and I are the only ones who have known that they existed. Occasionally I would mention them when they got really bad, but most people would forget and move on. Well a couple of weeks ago my wife thankfully convinced me to go to the doctor again to see if there were any advances in the last six years. It turns out… There were!! I couldn’t believe it, Dr. Huang at the UW simply said they had done a few of these, understood the procedure and were confident about doing the same for me. If it hurt bad enough to do it then they would be happy to take care of it for me. I was in awe, I couldn’t believe after six years (nearly a year of that time going from doctor to doctor to doctor), I walk in and four hours later I am all setup to have a procedure done in the next two weeks!

Well tomorrow is the day. I will have two procedures, one for now and one to prep for later. The one for now is interposition arthoplasty w/an allographed tendon. Basically graphing some dead persons Achilles Tendon to my left Radius so that the short Ulna bone rubs against this tendon that has been through a procedure that means my body won’t have to worry about accepting it. Most of the research on the internet proves that this is a result of arthritis research – btw, thanks everyone who has arthritis for getting the doctors to find this stuff!

The second procedure (likely to be more painful) is the Sigmoid notch plasty on the (DRUJ) distal radial ulner joint. The goal here is to create the sigmoid notch for me – for some reason mine is not there and to create a proper implant later in life, the notch needs to be created. The process was first documented by Williams & Wilkins in 2007, unfortunately a year after I gave up hope of finding a solution to my problem. Creating the notch is really to support an implant later in life, so that they don’t have to create the notch and put in the implant at the same time. I am happy that my doctor was thinking ahead about this and not willing to sacrifice my body with this procedure when it sounds easier (but is really more unknown and risky)

I am looking forward to a life with less pain and am especially thankful that my wife pushed me into going to the doctor a few weeks ago (btw, I usually hate going to the doctor – I am now re-evaluating that thinking and am thankful for what they are offering me this month).