When it comes to surgery, I have not have the best luck.
I remember the days that I used to proudly proclaim that I had never broken a bone in my life. The term "knock on wood" rang very true when my first break ended up being quite the doozy. I was home from college for the summer, between sophomore and junior years, and had joined a local women's softball team. This particular, fateful day, we had a game that was 45 minutes from home, in a town called Davenport. I was sliding into third base to avoid the tag, when my foot somehow got jarred on the base but my leg kept on going. So when I looked down (in shock!), my right leg was straight but my foot was hanging at a 90 degree angle, with a little bone protrusion to boot. An ambulance rushed me to the hospital where the verdict was a double compound fracture, two dislocations and torn tendons all the way up my ankle and calf. The good news - I was safe, and we won the game, which led to a championship at the end of the season! ;)
In my boot, helping celebrate the championship!
I spent the entire summer laying in a hospital bed in my parents' basement, reading and watching Saved by the Bell reruns. The first few weeks were complete misery. It was then that I found out I was allergic to demerol and codeine - so I was constantly having to hobble to the bathroom in pain in order to throw up. By the end of the summer I was in a walking boot, and being a farmer's daughter, had decided to help my dad by driving tractor. At some point during this time, I broke the long screw that was holding my foot together. Which meant more surgery and back to crutches, just in time for school to start. It was quite a test managing crutches in rainy Oregon to get through campus. So now I have a nice long plate in my leg and 10 screws, which tends to throb when a storm arrives, beeps when I go through security, and prevents me from running.
That has nothing to do with my Lyme, of course, but it was certainly the beginning to my surgery misfortunes.
In 2007, the night of Thanksgiving, I started having horrible, horrible chest pains. My parents wanted to drive me to the next town's ER, but being the tough cookie that I am, I opted to deal with the pain instead. It came back several more times over the course of the next month, once at work where I was walking the VP of the company through something on my computer - pure torture to pretend like nothing was wrong, considering the other times I was writhing on my floor at home. Anyway, turned out I had gallstones.
I didn't know much about this health issue, and being that I was still green at "being sick," I wasn't wise enough to do any research on it. The doctors made it seem as though the surgery would be an easy-peasy thing, and I'd be back on me feet, as normal and happy as ever. (I found out later that gallbladder surgery is one of the easiest to perform, aka easy money, ha!). The recovery wasn't fun - I remember having what felt like dry socket in my shoulder from the gas they injected in me to blow up my stomach. Although, I did have a new guy in my life who took care of me and made things better - just the start of my husband and I's patient-nurse relationship.
No surgery pics here, but this is us in our first year together (post-surgery) and the true, happy me - the day before my surgery.
A month later, things went downhill real quick. I had a whole host of some of the worst stomach issues you could imagine. And naturally, I blamed it all on the surgery - who wouldn't? I spent the next 4 years traveling the state, seeing doctor after doctor, some of who performed very extensive tests and procedures. I was diagnosed with gastroparesis (slow stomach emptying) which typically only happens in the elderly, and IBS (which I think is just BS) - a diagnosis doctors give when they don't know how else to explain your problems.
This is where the Lyme comes in. Now that I am finally older, wiser, and a skilled researcher, I have found that not only did my Lyme probably cause the gallstones, but the surgery is what caused my disease to come out of hibernation. You see, Lyme can lie dormant in your body for quite some time- but is often triggered by trauma - such as surgery, or any other challenge to the immune system, like emotional stress from an accident or death in the family.
According to my Lymestop doc, I contracted the disease when I was 24, which means it had been dormant in my body for several years.
The final surgery of my life thus far (and by final I really do hope that it is the last!) was my back surgery in 2013. This particular pain started back when we lived in Spokane. I noticed it especially when I was doing my Jillian Michael's home workouts. Everytime I laid on the floor to do my sit-ups, I felt like someone was stabbing me in the ribs. Then we moved to Olympia and I started another catering manager job. I remember driving home from Yelm, after setting up this huge, elaborate event for a well-known (and very secretive, celebrity attended!) cult. There was a lot of heavy lifting involved because they had specially ordered expensive chairs and tables etc. The cold, October rain had set, so when I got home, I bent down to turn on the pilot to our fireplace, but then I couldn't stand back up because the pain was so excrutiating. I was literally stuck in the doubled-over position, and my hubby was out of town!
Many x-rays and MRI's later, the doctor's discovered a cyst near my spine. We experimented with a cortisone shot to see if the pain would go away - and it did! Although, word to the wise, if you have Lyme disease STAY AWAY from steroids (and flu shots too!)! I came down with the worst flu symptoms of my life for several weeks. After much debate, and because the injection took my pain away, we opted to remove the cyst.
Post-surgery: on drugs, and thinking my pain would soon be gone.
Fast forward to present day - the pain from the cyst is gone, but that surgery was the point where my crippling, all-over pain began. I would gladly take that cyst pain back in exchange for what I'm going through now. My doctor says that one of my Lyme co-infections very likely settled in as a result from the surgery. I believe it, too, because the most intense of my pain is localized right below the incision. And in fact, I have very obvious marks all along my lower back, that are a definite sign of the Bartonella infection.
My lesson here is this: First of all, do your research! I wish I would have known back in 2008 that there are ways to naturally get rid of gallstones. I often wonder if I hadn't had that surgery, how much longer the disease would have been dormant in my body, and how many more years I could have lived as a happy and healthy 20-something. Then again, I suppose without those years of digestive hell, I may never have found out I have Lyme.
Secondly, if you DO know you have Lyme, definitely do your due diligence before having any kind of surgery. Some people with Lyme, unfortunately, don't have an option when it comes to surgery - because their brain or heart is infected so badly. For me, my back surgery was performed 4 months before I was diagnosed, so just like my gallbladder surgery, I thought going under the knife for my cyst was going to be the answer to my problems.
I personally hope that the word "surgery" will never come up again for me. But if it does, I know to think twice about the ramifications before going through with it. With the knife, comes a price!
