2-Year Anniversary: Global Pandemic Disruptions

In This Update:

• The Good
• The Bad
• Conclusion

Foreword
Let me just start by saying that I if I had my surgery scheduled for today instead of two years ago, it would have been a complete nightmare. Back then I was in so much pain that wasn’t able to work anymore. I was depressed, and I had no quality of life left. Making the decision to go overseas to have spinal surgery is scary enough, but having a global pandemic happen is an unforeseeable disaster I am glad I didn’t have to deal with. My heart goes out to all the people in severe pain, who have to live through this pandemic not knowing how this will affect their ability to fix their back, or when.

I am not going to lie, being an Emergency Department nurse during a global pandemic is petrifying! I am not so much worried about me getting sick but that I take this virus home somehow to infect Ralf. I wear all protective PPE at work that I can, but being locked into an isolation room with a very positive, very sick Covid-19 patient for 15 minutes while doing the triage and providing direct care causes a sickening knot in the pit of my stomach – which you push out of your mind until you did what you could for your patient. My peers and I are on edge, but we have each other’s backs and will care for our community with all we’ve got.

The Good

This 2-year update is not quite how I envisioned it, especially since I won’t have my follow-up X-rays until June (maybe), but gauging from how I feel, I would say that nothing has changed. After I have the images, I will send them to Dr. Desai in Cologne for review and confirmation, but that will not happen anytime soon.

Looking back at the past year, there is a lot I was able to do. As many of you know, Ralf and I have always been very outdoorsy people, so we continued to go on many biking adventures in various Florida forests and Wildlife Management Areas, and I never had any issues with my back, even if I had to carry my bike through bodies of unexpected waters. We also went tent camping in the Everglades, and I was riding 30 miles of muddy trails during a monsoon.

I also continued to advance through my workouts with Angela at her Crossfit Lake Nona gym. However, due to unforeseen circumstances, full-time work, and graduate school, I was not really able to truly establish a routine. Honestly, I envisioned myself being super-fit and able to do several pull ups which was one of my goals. Did that happen? Not really… Life appears to have a way to throw curveballs that can mess up all the good intentions and plans that were made. I don’t know about you, but 2019 really was an intense and pretty awful year.

We visited Key Largo in August of 2019 where we tried out sea-kayaking for the first time. This was truly a test to see how my back would behave since it required me to sit in a cramped space for over two hours while paddling and navigating the kayak through open water. I did feel a little stiff at the end but once I got out of the kayak and stood up, I felt great. Absolutely no pain or soreness. Definitely something we can repeat!

Another water activity Ralf and I started exploring involves a packraft. Ralf has gotten pretty serious with bikepacking, and a packraft is designed to be carried on the bike, which then gets strapped to the raft to continue via water ways. We received the pack raft also in August but due to what came next, we only took it out to the lake a couple of times so far. It’s a lot different to maneuver the raft compared to the sea kayak, but it appears to be a very fun activity for the future.

An impromptu wedding was also on the agenda, which ended up with just him and me in the courthouse. Ironically, the reason why we didn’t get married sooner was the difficulty of getting friends and family from around the world together at the same time. Ralf sometimes said, “let’s just elope…”, which is ultimately what happened!

Another major life-event was my graduation (finally) from my MSN Nurse Educator program in December. To be honest, with everything going on, I really didn’t want to go. However, here I was, getting my regalia on, taking pictures with Ralf in the driveway of our home because he was not able to come. At the arena, I ended up standing backstage with my group for 1 ½ hours before marching inside, just to sit for another 3 hours on a hard plastic chair. At least Ralf got to see me walk on livestream…

At work, I participated in various Emergency Management activities, such as retrieving a mock-victim from her car in the community and help with shooting a decon training video that required me to not just dress up in full gear but also tonrepeatedly kneel, lift and twist while transferring a mock-victim from the ground to a stretcher.

The Bad
Looking back at the past year, I must say it was awful in terms of certain life-events and stress but at least I was able to be there and do what needed to be done when it was most important.

Being able to go back to work as an ED nurse was one of my major goals, and it came to pass without issues. However, there has been a lot of negative energy developing in my department due to changes in leadership at the time. That in turn made going to work a very stressful time, but at least I got to care for my veterans again without physical restrictions.

Moving on to August: as it turned out, the Key Largo trip was the last time Ralf and I had normal lives. A few days after we got home, Ralf had a CT scan done that revealed stage 4 peritoneal carcinomatosis – a very rare cancer that grows in the abdomen and around all associated organs. This has truly been a life-altering shock, and it took me two weeks to pull myself together to come up with a plan. If you read my blog, you know the emotional roller-coaster we have been on. To make a long story short, against all odds, we found the only treatment option for his condition which was cytoreductive surgery with HIPEC (heated intraperitoneal chemotherapy). We decided to go with the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, which is one of the top 10 cancer centers in the world. Lucky for us, Tampa is only 1 ½ hours away which made traveling there a lot easier.

It was so hard to focus on school in the light of Ralf’s diagnosis. All this happened just before my last semester of my MSN program, which entailed a 180-hour internship I had to finish while working full time. To be honest, I almost dropped the semester, but Ralf really wanted to see me graduate in December, so I pulled myself together and pushed on. I think the hardest part was to be away from home pretty much all the time, either completing internship hours or going to work. Ralf’s surgery at Moffitt was set for November 22, so I had to get everything done before that date – including getting married and finish school!

I don’t know how, but I actually managed to get everything done a week before surgery. I can’t even imagine what would have happened if my back was still broken – constantly on the move, pushing on. In addition, while Ralf was admitted at Moffitt, I got to sleep on a pretty flimsy cot for 16 days, which my back tolerated just fine despite the bend in the middle of the mattress.

Fast forward to February: Ralf was recovering so well, and we started to go on hikes and some mellow bike rides. Everything was going so well until mid-February, where he had a sudden episode of severe abdominal pain that didn’t subside, so I had to take him to a local ER. Having a rare cancer is scary enough but getting admitted to a hospital where the doctors and nurses have no clue is downright petrifying. After the acute pain had somewhat subsided, Ralf was discharged without a diagnosis.

Two weeks later, the same thing happened to him but this time the pain was so much worse! I took him to a different ED in a much better hospital where he was admitted again. Besides pain control, they wouldn’t touch him either but at least they had him transferred to Moffitt where he needed to be. The final verdict now is severe adhesions and scar tissue that is strangling his gut, which is an unpredictable complication we didn’t see coming, but we have a plan once the pandemic subsides.

During the last admission, I got to sleep on two different guest cots, and I must say Moffitt wins the price despite their flimsy contraption! That thing I slept on at AdventHealth Celebration was so hard, I woke up stiff and in pain – from neck to low back, stiff like a board. No, the pain was nothing like my pre-op back pain; it was just a result of sleeping on something too hard and uncomfortable. I came to realize that I am not 20 anymore either: ADR surgery restored my back but it can’t protect me from age-related aches and pains, I suppose.

Conclusion
So, what’s the overall verdict at 2-years post-op? Number one, life WILL happen – with or without a broken back. However, ridding myself of the disabling, crippling, soul-sucking pain enabled me to do what needed to be done and be a support for my husband, rather than a burden, when he needed me most. It also prevented me from having to file for disability and losing control over what’s important to me. My LP-ESP is still going strong and doing its job well enough so that I can do mine!

I haven’t really made an announcement, but I just accepted a new position within my hospital as Simulation Coordinator, and I am pretty excited about this opportunity! Everything I worked so hard for during my MSN program and beyond has paid off. I really love healthcare simulation, so this job is the perfect match. In addition, this position will give me bankers hours: 8 am to 4:30 pm, Monday through Friday, weekends and holidays off. That way I can be home with Ralf in the evenings, when he tends to be more uncomfortable, and we can also better plan our lives due to my predictable schedule. However, I won’t be transitioning until the pandemic is over, since my services are needed on the frontline right now.

Please stay home, stay safe, and stay healthy!