Update on Benjamin - 12/9/24

I wanted to communicate a quick update on Benjamin's recent surgery.  Since his fall and previous surgeries, he's recovered and has long been back at work, experiencing a nice recovery.  In seeing an orthopedic surgeon following several months of recovery, it was recommended that he have one additional surgery on his right foot.

Since the accident, the toes on Benjamin's right foot curl up tight.  He cannot straighten them out.  This contributes to pain as he's always walking on his toes and that causes a limp.  He works as an electrical engineer in a refinery, so he has to wear steel toed boots and this intensifies the pain.  The goal of this surgery is to reduce the limp and lessen the pain.

The surgeon went in under his foot and released some tendons, went in under his toes and worked on the capsules and this straightened them out.  His big toe was curled in an excessive fashion.  The tendons were cut and lengthened and using screws, the big toe was straightened out as well.

The doctor feels that the surgery was a success and scheduled a follow-up visit in two weeks.  Benjamin has moved back in with us as he has some limitations in the short term.  He cannot put any weight at all on his foot for six weeks.  He cannot drive for 3 months.  He'll also need to go back to rehab.  We took his walker out of storage, and he was using that until today, when his buddy brought him a pair of crutches.

Amazingly, he's not experiencing much pain and is in great spirits.  We're praising God for his Goodness throughout this whole ordeal.  We look forward to Benjamin's continued healing.

An Update on Benjamin

 

Russ, Tricia & Benjamin

It's been over a year ago that Benjamin was severely injured in a terrible accident.  I don't want to replay it all, but you can go HERE to read about it.  He's made lots of progress since then and has been back at work for months.  He does, however, need another surgery on his right foot.  The reason is that the nerves and tendons on that foot have pulled tight due to the injury resulting in a curling of the toes.  With the toes curled up, he walks on them and this causes pain, especially in his work boots.  At the end of the day, he's in pain, and this causes him to walk with a limp.

We've seen a surgeon at LOS (Louisiana Orthopaedic Specialists), and Benjamin has surgery scheduled for early December, if it all works out with his job.  We pray that this will be approved by his place of employment as he needs to have this done after having it put off for a while.  Another reason to do it is because he's met his deductible for the year.  The surgeon intends to cut open the bottom of his foot and do some work releasing some of the nerves and tendons and then work on his big toe as well.  This surgery will require 3 months in a boot and he'll be non-load bearing and won't be able to drive.  He'll be back in rehab once he's load bearing again.

To be honest, it's more than we were counting on and with a longer recovery period than originally thought.  It's easy to get a little discouraged, but when I do, I think back to the night of September 4 last year when we didn't know if he would survive and if he did, if he'd be paralyzed.  God has enabled him to make a phenomenal recovery.  Praise His Name!  The surgeon told us that after recovery "his gait will be improved."  His doctor told him that he'd run again, and I am counting on that to happen by God's grace.  It's in God's Hands and we trust Him.

I'm Back

Wednesday morning I had to report to Baylor St. Luke's Hospital in Houston as surgery began sharply at 8AM.  We spent the night at a hotel in the medical center the night before.  That morning, they had me do a thorough cleaning and then they shaved me shoulder blades to knees.  I had to put a cap on and a gown.  

The last thing I remembered was being rolled into a large operating room with a gallery with viewing windows up top.  There were lots of lights and lots of equipment and a full team of people getting ready to work.  It was very cold in there.  Then I don't remember anything.  The surgery lasted for 6 hours and then I was pulled into ICU.  Tricia and my Dad and Mom came and visited me, but I don't remember any of this.  I was still knocked out from the anesthesia and still intubated.

The surgery went well, they said.  They were able to repair, versus replace, the mitral valve.  They didn't need to give me any blood.  That was important to me.  I didn't want a transfusion.  The surgery was called Minimally Invasive Robotic Mitral Valve Repair.  They went into my femoral artery and I went on the bypass machine.  I assume they oxygenate the blood and pump it through my body by the machine, while the heart is arrested for about 90 minutes while they fixed it.  

In the surgery, they break no bones.  No sternotomy as is normally the case in open heart surgery. There are several incisions for the instruments, but they are relatively small (the biggest being about 4 inches between my ribs on the right side) and no human fingers went inside my body.

The photo on the top left below shows what they did inside my heart, robotically.  I think you can click on it and enlarge it.  The brightly lit area shows my mitral valve inside the heart chamber looking down.  The mitral valve was prolapsed, with a severe regurgitation.  What that means is that approximately 25% of my blood was flowing in the opposite direction.  It had caused the upper chamber of my heart to expand and had to be dealt with to avoid further damage.  The heart was very inefficient, but I felt no symptom.  Of course, when they told me what was going on, my mind told me that this is why I was getting tired.

They cut a triangle-shaped piece from the mitral valve, pulled it together and stitched it up. You can see the black stiches in the center of the photo.  Then, to re-shape the foundation of the valve, they used mesh to fashion what they call "the smile" to form up the foundation.  This was riveted into the muscle.  You can see the tubes in the photo that the robotic arms worked in.

Then they pressured up the heart valve with saline, and it was pressured up at 2 times the normal pressure of the chamber.  When it showed that the leaflets/valve held the blood securely without allowing the backflow, they knew that the repair was successful.  At this point, if it was not successful, they would have cut all of that out and put in a pig or cow valve.  I could have also chosen a mechanical valve, but would have been on blood thinners for the rest of my life, so I opted for the biological valve, if needed.  Fortunately, they were able to repair it, so a happy pig rests somewhere tonight with his valve still intact?

I was moved after one day out of ICU and into a regular room.  In this photo, you can see the extent of the scarring.  Really not too bad.

The doctor, on rounds, came to remove my chest tube which was draining.  That thing was very uncomfortable.

They had me up and walking very quickly.  I felt good.  Honestly, the pain meds make you feel like you're okay, but if you get behind on your meds, you quickly realize that you're not okay.  The care from the surgeons, to nurses and all medical staff at the hospital was simply amazing.  As the doctor was pulling out my chest tube, he told me that the surgical team had a heart transplant scheduled for that evening.  They do about 40 heart transplants each year and about 100 lung transplants.  What an amazing thing!  To be able to make an impact on people's lives like that!  I told him when I went home, my goal was to plant some cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli.  His plans were to take a diseased heart out of someone and replace it with a donor heart that would extend his or her time with family and friends.  The intricacies of the human body and the wisdom God blesses people with to be able to work on them astounds me.

The doctor also clipped the wires on the pacemaker and let it fall back into my chest.  I also had an 'epidural-like' injection into my spine area which was deadening my whole right side where they had cut through the muscles to get to my chest cavity to gain access to the heart.  That was removed as well.  I don't have any sensation on my right side.  I assume that I have some nerve damage from where the incision was made to get to my heart.  Nerve damage heals slowly, but I'll bring that up with them.

By Sunday afternoon at 5PM, I was released from the hospital and Tricia drove me the 3 hour trip home.  Unbelievable!  Wednesday at 8AM open heart surgery commenced and in less than 5 whole days I'm back at home.

I have several checkups I have to go to and I can't drive for two weeks.  I just have to take it slow and allow my body to recover.  I'll say this:  God is good!  He saw fit to give me extra time on my clock and gave me excellent service from some very skilled medical doctors that are on the cutting edge of technology.  He also gave me a wonderful family who cares for me and close friends who have concern for me.  Many prayers went up and God answered them.

Montgomery Gentry sang a country song called "Lucky Man" that I always liked.  I don't believe in luck.  I believe in blessing, so I've changed the words of the chorus, but I think they are appropriate:

I know I'm a blessed man, God's given me a pretty fair hand,
I've got a house and a piece of land, a few dollars in a coffee can,
My old truck's still runnin' good, my ticker's tickin' like they say it should,
I got supper in the oven, a good woman's lovin' and one more day to be my little kids' dad,
Lord knows I'm a blessed man.

Removing Stitches

In This Post we explained that little Amy, our Jersey heifer, had to go to the veterinarian in Lake Charles to have a horn surgically removed.  We thought we were successful removing her horns with Horn Removal Paste when she was only a couple weeks old, but one of the horn buds evidently was not killed and it grew back.  It was too large to use a horn disbudding iron, so the vet in Lake Charles took care of it for us for about $113 bucks.  Ouch!  Note to self:  It is easier and cheaper to do things right the first time.

Well, her stitches were to come out after a couple of weeks, but there was no way I was going to take her back to Lake Charles.  Certainly this is a job that I can do, right?  I tied Amy's head real tight to the center dividing wall in the stall.  She knew something was up...

Snitches get stitches?

The veterinarian put a number of stitches on both sides of her head where he surgically removed Amy's horn buds.  The stitches he used weren't your typical "cat-gut" stitches that dissolve.  These were made of a non-dissolvable string that looked and felt like very thick dental floss.

Amy's stitches

I can't say that I've ever removed stitches before, but it can't be too hard, right?  I used some toenail clippers and clipped the knot on the end.  It must still be a little tender as Amy started thrashing around a bit.  I was by myself so I kind of put her in a head-lock and snipped away at every knot that I could see in the row of stitches.

A new use for toenail clippers

Once the knots were cut off, I pulled and the stitches came out pretty easily.  I checked real closely to ensure that I was getting all of them out.  I don't think it is a major problem, but I wanted to get them all out, nonetheless.

Pulling out the stitches after the knots were snipped off

Once I was done with one side, I went to the next.  It wasn't a bad job at all and I would've been done earlier had the 'patient' been more patient and stayed still.  All in all the veterinarian did a good job of closing up a couple very large gashes - about 5 inches on either side, I would estimate.  I think it will heal up perfectly.

Amy's Frankenstein impression

Here are a handful of stitches I removed from Amy's head.  We saved a little bit by doing it ourselves and also saved the time and gas money by doing it at home.

Stitches from one side of Amy's head

I was a little surprised that there was no blood as I had to tug a little bit on one side to get some of the stitches out.  All in all, it reinforced the lesson to me to make sure that the job is done right the first time. When Daisy and Rosie's calves come in March 2015, we're going to be sure to put enough de-horning paste so that the horn bud dies. I don't want to have to re-do the process.  One positive though - I learned that stitch removal is a piece of cake.