Most Interesting Operation Yet!

Yesterday, Thursday 3rd April, was my operation day. I have been back in the hospital since Wednesday to have the hardware, that was put in Dec.06, removed from my left ankle area. The operation in itself turned out to be one of the coolest I have had in a long while. Note that this is my 10th or so operation on my left leg.

The operation started with a local anesthesia. I thought that like previous times, it would be an epidural too numb the lower half of my body. It was in fact a left leg nerve block. Nerve blocks are strange. They start by sticking an electrified needle into the main nerves in your backside and then upper calf. At that moment your leg starts to twitch and move by itself - a strange feeling- which is followed by the injection of the anesthetic. Your leg then slowly starts to become numb... you know that pins and needles feeling you get if you sit on your arm for a long time. They started operating when I could basically no longer move my leg as it felt like a ton of gold bars and I could no longer feel any sense of temperature (those where the tests they carried out to see if it was ready).

The surgeon then began to operate! I felt, smelt and heard everything that was going on! The nerve block in fact only kills the pain sensor...you still feel and touch, etc. I won't recount the whole operation as it was a long 2.5 hours but here are some of the highlights:

• They used a laser scalp to cut through the flesh - smelt the searing meat


• To remove the screws and plate, they had to chisel away and use a hammer to pry the screws loose


• They scrapped away some set-in arthritis and irrigated my ankle

The advantage of having had the operation this way was less down time as you don't suffer the secondary effects of the anesthetics from a GA.