Oh, Kate!  Better not try flying with all that metal in your wrist!  
That is great news.  Do keep us informed.  It looks like you will be
typing one handed for quite a while.  Wasn't there a thread on here a
while back about a program that works with the voice?  That might be a
thought.  I hadn't heard much lately.

Do keep you funnies coming in the email, I really look forward to
them.

Loujean

Wow...good news over all! I'm very glad to see this. I thought about you all
day and hoped things went well.

I never type that much with two hands, you must be wiped out.

Soft hugs,
Kelly C.

well, mostly good news. and a very good doc. sorry about that extra
break you needed like a hole in the head. or like an extra break in the
arm. i'm confused about the date of your surgery tho. tell when so the
prayer machine can get in gear.

diane

Kate I have to say I admire your being able to type that much. I also admire
that you are keeping the group up to date on what is going on. I don't think
I would have your gumption to do so. I would take the wimpy way out and ask
someone else to post for me. ;-)

Boy you really did yourself in. I so hope you heal quickly. You are in my
thoughts, prayers, and hugs and warm fuzzies, and lots of  TLC coming your
way. You take care and do not, DO NOT, in case I was saying that too quiet,
fall again. Please be careful.

If you are happy about it all,,, I surely am.  In am prayers,,,
Harv

Dear Kate, you really don't do things half-way, do you?  Glad you stopped
the percocet so you could find out about the elbow stuff.  Pray the surgeon
will be able to do everything he mentioned, even better than he thinks he
can.  You know you will be in many, many prayers.
Gwen

What a day!!

Good news and bad. Will be praying for you and your surgeons on Friday.
Think peaceful thoughts!

Adelle

thank you, you guys, for hanging in there with me, for your commiserations,
prayers, healing thots, positive energies, help, wisdom and for laughing at
my goofy sense of humor and providing me with chuckles because of your own
wit.  i love and appreciate all of you.

kate
long day.  just back at 3:30pm.

my dear friend, linda, picked me up at 8am and took me to my pre-op appmt.
i had her come in the examroom with me to help me remember stuff i wanted to
ask and answers and anything she could think of to ask, that i'd forget.

mri's were great news, in that he saw in them how he could do all the
repairs arthroscopically, with several incisions from different sides of my
wrist.  he felt plates were definitely out of his repair plan, too many
small bone pieces to make it stay in place.  traction during surgery is in,
to separate my hand from wrist, as it was stoved into my wrist and actually
shortened my total length, and to allow him room to work interiorly.  his
plan is to get all the fragments back wher they belong, within one-tenth of
a millimeter---w0w, that amazed me.   also in his plan is multiple internal
pins and lots of internal wires to hold the bits together.  also in his plan
are bone grafts from my arm and possibly my hip.  the fixator is definitely
in the plan for about six weeks.  he's hoping the fixator can be removed in
six weeks and that i might begin very gentle pt after then.  said i should
have most of my wrist functon working in six months, if i work hard for it,
though it will be weak and continue healing and strengthening for the
remainder of a year.

befoer he mentioned the pt part of his plan, i asked him 'does the bone
graft ppart mean we are going tobe fusing part of my wrist?'  he said, 'not
at all.  we are filling in where solid bone should be with grafting
material, kinda like loose mortar, the pin or wire.  i'm going to be moving
a lots of bone pieces around all over inside your wrist, so be prepared to
be uncomfortable for awhile, until connecting tissues are no longer bruised
from this putting pieces back where they should be.  i'm stressing this, so
you know.  all around inside your wrist, your whole wrist will be
uncomfortable.'

soooo, if the surgery takes 2 hours, which he thinks is possible, there will
be 2 hours recovery room.  more time in surgery, equally more time in
recovery.  he said doing this all arthroscopically will cut hours off what
we need to do.  meaning----JUST ONE OPERATION!!!!  YAAAAYYYY!

the bad news is--because of the itching i was experiencing, i stopped taking
the percocet until it stopped.  that stopped pain management and caused me
to feel the pain in other places that were not as severe as the pain in my
wrist.  like most of you know and i also knew, when you break a bone, pain
eases up in about 3 or 4 days, so it was something i knew i could handle.
well, because the percocet no longer masked it, i noticed what felt, to me,
like more broken bone pain up by my elbow.  so, i mentioned that to him.

he said i know what broken bones feel like better than many people, so let's
xray that, cause he wants to know if that will cause problems with traction
in OR.  sooo, i also cracked the radius up by my elbow, too, it seems.  good
positioning, and he thinks the splint can handle it, too.  ordinarily he
might cast it, but thinks he won't have to.  thinks it won't mess up
traction, because there are two main bones in the arm, but might mess up
grafts from the arm, so he'll go with my hip if he needs to have a different
donor site.

lordy, what a long day getting all the pre-op tests done at the hospital
that everybody and their brother were also getting tests at.  more xrays and
back to him with them to check on what i suspected.  and then getting the
post op pain killers and cephalexin to cover the bases so that my dormant
infection doesn't wake up during or right after surgery and cause post-op
problems.

i'm tired gang.  takes me a long time to type one handed.  think i'll go
rest for awhile.  i need to.

kate