Good and bad

It's been a while since I've had time to write.  Bad news first...

I had the surgery on my neck and had a 1 in 100 complication.  At the end of the surgery, I had a dural leak - a leak of spinal fluid.  Instead of being up and about the same day, I had to be flat on my back for 24 hours to allow the leak to heal.  I spent the time in the hospital, only being allowed to raise the bed 30 degrees to eat.  Thankfully, by 3 days after the surgery I was feeling fine.  No positional headaches, which is the sign of the leak.

For the good news, the surgery was successful.  I noticed an immediate difference, and could even separate out the pain from the surgery from my usual neck pain.  The surgeon said that my nerves at C5/6 were extremely compressed so he expected me to feel worse before feeling better since he was messing around with everything in the area.  The right side of my neck felt like I was beaten up after surgery, which was the inflammation from the surgery.  My usual pain is more of a pinching feeling.  Now, over a week later, I still need to rest my neck by the end of the day but it is so much better.

In other news, I only have 2 more IV treatments.  I am really looking forward to having the PICC taken out.  I will still have about 10 more days on the last oral antibiotic, but hopefully I will start to see more improvement once the main treatment is done.  Time will tell!