Hardware problems

[Guest guest]

My heart goes out to everyone in the group who is having problems with hardware

right now. I have had some roughly comparable problems in the past, at least

with the pelvic bolts from my first revision. Dr. Ondra here in Chicago was able

to pinpoint the location of my pain very accurately by sending me to

Interventional Radiology. They anesthetized the two spots that were giving me

excruciating pain, and the pain was temporarily alleviated. The two points

corresponded to the location of those two nasty old pedicle screws.

I have also undergone emergency re-fusion when I began having severe pain and

losing all my correction a few weeks after surgery, but that was a different

story. I had somehow developed a fracture in the fusion mass. By the time I got

to surgery, the fracture had extended almost to my spinal cord, and I was in

considerable danger of permanent paralysis.

I also know how it feels to realize that something is trying to get out of your

body! One of my morphine pumps did this repeatedly -- nearly broke through the

skin. Each time it was pretty urgently necessary for me to get into surgery with

my pump-neurosurgeon. He relocated the pump several times -- back and forth

between the left and right sides of my abdomen -- and ultimately replaced it

with a new pump, which has so far stayed in its place. The last time I went in

for pump-surgery, a whole team of very nice infectious disease specialists was

checking in on me every day while trying to culture a tiny bit of exudate the

surgeon had managed to scrape off the original, problematic pump. They never

found any infectious organisms whatsoever, though they kept me on a slew of

antibiotics, both oral and IV, for quite a few days. My surgeon still felt

strongly that there must have been some subclinical infectious process at work.

(I had been tested early on for an allergy to any component of the pump, and

those tests came up negative.)

I get the sense that infection is not necessarily as great a concern with spinal

hardware -- that the spinal rods and screws more typically go astray because of

mechanical/anatomic problems or accidental damage to the hardware. In any case,

it is super-important to get to a skilled revision surgeon post haste,

regardless of your insurance situation. Paige, you need to be seen and monitored

at the very least. I can't think any spinal specialist -- especially in a

teaching hospital, where these specialists usually are found -- would refuse to

see you with a problem like this one. I hope you have been able to start

calling, emailing, faxing, or beeping as many of these surgeons as necessary.

You need help yesterday. I'll refrain from getting on my habitual soapbox re

health insurance in the U.S. lest I sound like a raving lunatic -- this is the

kind of situation that makes me crazy. Just know that all of us who have read

about your plight are deeply concerned and are thinking and worrying about you,

for what that's worth. Please get to the doctor, and please keep us posted . . .

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