Spinal Fusion | 20 Years Later

Hello!

In the last several years a lot has happened, I celebrated 10 years as a blogger in 2019, I hit two milestones in last year, starting with my blog turning 10 in October and I entered my “dirty thirties” a month later. For this year, there is a very different anniversary, and I’ve felt weird about it for months. I actually decided to allow myself to write about my thoughts months in advance because I couldn’t get it out of my mind of how it’s been this long since it happened, so I hope you enjoy taking a trip down memory lane today.

I was technically born with three conditions, as you may know I have Arthrogryposis Multiplex Congentia, but this can lead to other problems like babies born with club feet. scoliosis, etc. I happen to have a serve case of AMC with the addition of a club foot, rocker bottom, and scoliosis. I’ve had many, many physical therapies over the years, in the hopes of trying to help make life a little easier. I’ve had discussions about what could be done as far as surgeries go to “fix” my arms and feet, but the only I ever had been the full spinal fusion surgeries in 2002.

Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

What is spinal fusion?

Spinal fusion surgery is usually the last option, if your back cannot be corrected after wearing braces for multiple years. The National Spine Health Foundations says, it is like trying to fix a broken bone(s), which is a great way on how to explain it, especially in my experience. What does one do in the hopes of repairing a deformed bone? You have two options: use a splint or form a brace/cast and hope time will heal all wounds… Nice pun action there, right?

I wasn’t a stranger to braces; we still have the itty-bitty braces doctors gave us for my hands. When I came out of the womb, my arms weren’t set in the position at my chest. According to my mother, they were somewhat flat, and the doctors tried to adjust them twice. The first was when I was in incubator, (I was a preemie, so I needed a little help breathing and then of course figuring what was going on with my body.) and the nurses made a makeshift log by folding a single wash cloth and propped me on top of it so my arms would stretched out and eventually my parents were given the braces for my forearms and they a little smaller compared to a standard remote for your TV!

Anyways, I was about five or six years when I was put into the first brace I actually remember. I don’t exactly remember the appointment itself but It had many crooks and crannies, plus it was very decorated with stickers, thanks to my fellow classmates adding a bit of fun to the whole thing! I wore it until the end of third grade and just before I turned 10, I was fitted with a brand-new brace and it was very bulky, this was as close to a corset as I could get, and thankfully I only had to wear it for less than a year because it wasn’t doing very much to help me at this point.

I remember the night before we drove up to Shriner’s Hospital in St. Louis, my mom had my sister and I and we prayed together if it was decided by the doctors I would have surgery, I remembered our expressions being of fear and shock, I mean we were kids, despite the fact we’d go over there multiple times a year since I was about two years old, somehow I hadn’t heard that word “surgery” before, so it was no wonder why I can remember that scene so well because it was a new thing to me, and I didn’t fully understand that whole process until much later in life.

The actual appointment is still hilarious to me because after getting X-Rays done five minutes earlier, the four of us were called next and put into the standard size room with a very used chalk board and different toys attached to the wall next to the giant mirror. Our parents were wrecked with nerves, Blondie was playing, and I was on the cold floor slowly peeking out into the hallway, watching everybody walk around, which is something I still do at age 30, but I noticed there were a lot of doctors looking at a set of X-Rays and I saw my doctor among them. I knew at that moment they were inspecting my images and as I was told to scoot back in the room, I didn’t feel scared but curious of the language they were discussing–I knew something big was coming and it fascinated me!

As I made my way back over to my folks, they suspected the doctor would be coming soon, so one of them lifted me onto that damn bed thingy and I sat there for a short time before they came into the room. How do you know you’re going to have surgery? Well, in my case, about 7 doctors walked right in and they were the same 7 people busy talking in low tones about the process of my spine. There were tears and I cracked a couple of jokes, because that’s how I roll in life. The day we went up there for this appointment had to been in mid-April 2002, because by the start of August, and what would be the beginning of my 5th grade school year, we made another trip which would be even longer as I was now an inpatient on the second, B floor with a roommate by the name of Shelby.

My mom and I tend to argue about the exact date we went up and stayed at the hotel and eventually moved into the hospital to stay. The first night in that hospital was another hilarious experience! I couldn’t get to sleep, because the next day would start on my three-and-half-month journey. We got yelled at by one of the night nurses that the TV wasn’t allowed on at night. This is definitely something you don’t tell a new patient, but we followed the rules, and after my mom went to bed, I decided to play with the controls of my bed, and I had that thing folded up like a taco! I think my mom woke up in the middle of my fun and told me off, because I don’t remember much after that!

The next day, Dr. Lawrence Lenke only came to the hospital on Tuesdays and Thursdays as he spent the majority of the time at the Children’s Hospital a few miles into the city, where I would end going for the second and third surgeries. The first was a smaller one but the one we can somewhat pinpoint the easiest, which is why I tend to celebrate them on this one date, as supposed to the day we left in early November. This surgery was just as important as the doctor and his nurses and techs fitted a half halo made of metal onto my skull. I had eight pins screwed into sections to keep it secured and I was attached to a pole in both my bed and wheelchair to keep myself alignment. I ended up having three surgeries altogether, but I wouldn’t have the actual spinal fusion surgery six days after my 11th birthday.

Over the years, I’ve finally figured out the timeline of everything that happened, both while I was in surgery and recovery, and what was going on at home and school too. My mom and I were separated from our support systems. My dad stayed home to work and stay with my younger sister, she actually doesn’t have a lot of memories of that time, whereas I remember almost everything. I had tons of distractions between school, friends that stayed in our section, the goofy nurses and field trips. I went on more field trips in three months than I did in one year!

A little after I had my first surgery, I got to meet some of St. Louis Cardinal baseball players. My dad was very excited, he thoroughly enjoyed this! I think this and the time a group of motorcyclists came to visit us and brought us goodies. Anyways, I’m not into baseball so I sort of felt silly meeting these guys, but the Cardinals team is a big supporter of Shriner’s Hospital, and visit the kids, and sometimes a group of kids, nurses and people in the RT (recreational therapy) go to watch a game and meet the entire team(s) and I am thrilled they do this. We met with a great bunch of guys, and it was really fun, but I highly doubt Woody Williams still has my autograph but hey you never know! He was very curious of my ability to write with my feet, so we did a trade, he signed my shirt, and I gave him my autograph.

From L to R we have Timo Martinez, Andy Benes (he retired later in the 2002 season!), Mike DiFelice and Woody Williams. Notice the metal halo on the top of my head, and the pole behind my wheelchair. Photo credit: Dona Glambert aka my nana!

It is absolutely crazy that it’s been over 20 years since I had my first surgery, the other two anniversaries will be at the end of October and first week of November.

I could sit here and tell you all of the things that happened, but it would be even longer than it is now, so I am going to stop here for now. If you would like to ask any question about my experiences; while I was staying at Shriner’s, recovering, or anything else, you can email me at gotmeghan.blog@gmail.com Be sure to get the dot in between “gotmeghan” and “blog” before you send your messages! I’d also like to say if you know someone who was a nurse at that hospital, worked in the B section, and remembers anything about the girl who drove her wheelchair with her feet, I’d also like to get in touch with you/them too!

Have you ever had surgery before? What was the location and reason why you needed to have it in the first place? Leave your answers below!

February Playlist

Howdy!

I was debating whether or not to actually publish this post, but I felt like I listened to too many great tunes this past month that I ended up talking myself into it anyways.

For the past three or four months I’ve had to listen to music through YouTube because unfortunately, I’ve run out of room on my laptop to keep installing Spotify. So I am just stuck with YouTube, but it isn’t a total loss though, because I’m able to look up a lot of tracks that are not available on Spotify. I’m also able to search easily and listen to playlists of other users of the site. There is one thing that I miss about Spotify and that’s my “release radar” playlist, it’s a list of recent releases of my favorite artists and bands. I am usually more excited to check it out first compared to the “new music” playlist, because it gives me a bigger variety of music that I listen to on a daily basis.

As everybody was doing the decade challenge of sharing a sort of “before and after” on their profiles of what they looked like in 2009 to what they look like nowadays. I haven’t done it, but I have been rediscovering music from the late 90’s to 2009. It’s actually become a bit of a problem, because I want to hear older music than what’s been coming out recently! It doesn’t necessarily work very well when you’re a music blogger! There has been one genre that I’ve been looking up a lot lately and that’s R&B music. I use to listen to a lot of it when I was younger, I liked the catchy lyrics and relaxed vibes of the beats. What I’ve been finding to be interesting (and scary at the same time) is that I am remembering the lyrics and what it was to make me fall in love with the song in the first place!

One thing that is difficult is not listening to both R. Kelly and Chris Brown. I’ve been trying my best to not give Chris Brown a listen anywhere for the past several years, sometimes I’m successful but there are days when I hear “With You” or “Yeah 3x” and I cave in! He does have a great voice, but it’s his actions with the various domestic abuse issues, I’ve tried to stay away as best I can. The same goes with R. Kelly too, after reading and watching testimonies of the victims of his abuse online and the documentaries on Lifetime. I’ve stopped listening to “Ignition (Remix)” on the radio and I really miss it! It sucks when somebody’s actions can take away any enjoyment you’ve felt about that person, but I have to stand up for my beliefs and if that means muting their music then I’ll work on stopping it.

Here are my Top 10 songs I’ve been enjoying lately!

When I Die by ALMA
Fire Meets Fate by Ruelle
Savages by Sam Tinnesz
Goddess by Avril Lavigne
Poison & Wine by The Civil Wars
Loyal To Me by Nina Nesbitt
Gallery by Mario Vazquez
Show Stopper by Danity Kane featuring Yung Joc
Dip It Low by Christina Millian
Don’t Let Go by En Vogue

I’ve been meaning to go back to reviewing albums, but I haven’t been in the right state of mind to do anything like that right now. I do have a couple that I do want to talk about and if I have a good day in the next couple of days, I might go ahead and work on them! I have been wondering about something though. Since I’ve been wanting to listen old music, would you like me to review one of my favorite childhood or teenage albums? I actually rarely ever listened to a whole album when I was younger, so I thought I could give them another try and see how much my tastes have changed over the years. Let me know in the comments if you’d like that.

Lastly before I go, I just wanted to let you know that if you visit my Facebook page on Saturday, I’ll post five extra songs for you to check out over the weekend! Hopefully you’ll remember and like them just as much as I have been in the last few days!

So I’m curious, what do you think is the best year for music? What were listening in the month of February?

Blogmas | Meaning & Topics

Hi 🙂

So it’s now December which means it is time for Blogmas! And as you can see, I have snowflakes falling down on my blog! I always love that feature and it usually lasts for the entire month too. Back to what I was saying though, last year was my first real year of doing blogmas and I had a lot of fun figuring out what I wanted to write and share with you all. This time, my creativity has hit a dip, but I do want to try to come up with good posts for you to enjoy.

If you are a new reader and wondering what the crap “blogmas” is, well it is holiday edition of blogging; meaning you post about the many topics about Christmas as you want. People tend to do the full 24-25 days but I am comfortable with my three days a week. So you’ll get a new post every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday! If you are into YouTube though, sometimes your favorite people will do “vlogmas” which is the same thing, but it’s more visually so if you’re more interested in watching those, you need to check them out too. Personally, I love both Zoella and Niomi Smart, but I anybody that does daily vlogs you should be fairly entertained for the whole month.

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In October, I published a post about some of last minute ideas to do with your pumpkins, and so I had the idea of starting blogmas in the same way. There are some people who are still thinking about joining all of the fun, and I think this will be perfect to help them make that leap! Now you don’t have to do the same things I did, but you can do other things that go with these ideas. I just wanted you to have an idea of what I’ve done in the past, and hopefully they’ll inspire you to have fun throughout the holidays!

How To Wrap Your Presents – As many of you know, I am disabled and use my feet for everything. Unfortunately, I’ve never been taught on how to wrap gifts the “right way” because nobody in my family usually has the patience to teach me these things. So last year, my nana finally did it and I created this post for others who haven’t been taught plus for anybody that likes to see me the crazy things with my toes. Yes, I’m talking about you Rebekah!

Holiday House Tour – This seems so bittersweet as this will be the last post about my grandparent’s house during the holidays. Thankfully, I will always remember the way it looked because of the posts I’ve done over the last three years! If I can, I might do another tour but it’ll be of my nana’s “dorm” she has at the nursing home! I think she’ll like me doing that for her too.

Holiday Nails – There are many ways to do up your nails for Christmas. I’m pretty sure we did Candy Canes one year too! These weren’t the prettiest, but they were fun to do. I really tested my nana’s patience (and mine!) with this one.

Paper Hollies – I still can’t believe nana was the one who found this one! I will say though, it was really fun to do! I think everybody still has theirs so they can add them to the trees this year! If you love glitter, this is the craft for you!

Christmas Gift Bags – This is another somewhat sad post, as I know I won’t be able to do it this year. For the last four years in a row, nana and I did a special goody bag and this would be our last craft, and it was probably our souped up DIY because we decorated the bags, made bark, cookies, the hollies and added two candy canes into each bag for the 23 people! Sidenote: read about the batman snowman I did for Brandon, trust me if you need a good laugh, that’ll help you out tons! 

December Playlist – Honestly any Christmas music playlist will work great for this, but I honestly can’t listen to a lot of holiday music. So I still made up my regular playlist but added some of my papaw’s favorites like Stan Kenton, plus a couple from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation soundtrack because why now?

Let’s Bake Some Cookies – You guys should be familiar with my annual cookie post by now, but if you’re new, we do this every year and it really doesn’t matter who I’m around because at one time we had over 100+ cookies because my nana and I made them and then mom, Blondie and I made some too! At least the ones I did with nana, I could leave the cookies naked if I wanted or just add sprinkles to them because my mom and sister love a LOT of frosting on their cookies!

Milk Chocolate Oreo Bark – This was probably the most confusing but exciting thing I think nana and I ever did! Considering we’ve done a lot of crazy stuff in our times together, this was one in the top 10 things we ever did that probably frustrated her but didn’t break my spirit moments. And I will say, they tasted amazing! Everybody wished they had more. They could’ve just said that to make us feel better, but I don’t know because I thought they were pretty taste-y too!

If you’d like more ideas, I did another post of last minute ideas for 2016 (oops, I forgot about that!) and hopefully these will get your creative juices flowing!

I have three different album reviews (not counting tomorrow’s post!) that we can say fit the holiday category! You have the traditional and original songs by these artists and it was so much fun writing these posts that I might even do it again for 2018! I also have a couple of other posts going up, like a baby wislist for the little “nugget” going up next Monday! And then the next day I wrote about I wanted Santa Claus to get me for Christmas when I was a kid and what I look forward in getting now as an adult; plus I opened it up to my friends and family and added some of their responses at the end too.

One of the last things I do after Christmas is over, is that I post my “Best Of” pieces that talk about all of my favorite posts I did throughout the year. My other favorite is the post that list all of the movies from both 2016 and 2017 “coming soon” lists and rate the movies! I’ve figured out that I have watched a lot more than I did last year, so I will probably be splitting them up like I do with the yearly movie lists that way it’s not too complicated for me to write up like it was for this year’s!

Summary | Best Of 2016 – Best & Worst In Film 2015-16

So are you doing Blogmas? Or are you going to watch any vlogmases this year? Share with me! 

 

The Memory House

Why is it about moving that is good for the soul, but it also feels like your heart being ripped into a million pieces at the same time?

In every house I’ve ever lived or much less stayed a few nights in, I usually remember maybe a couple of small details of it, it really just depends on whatever happened there. I don’t know why my mind allows me to be haunted by these things but it does. However, there was one house that has a lot of good memories attached to it, so much that it stings of the situation that bubbled up to the surface recently.

My grandparent’s house that has been in my family for decades. If you’ve read my earlier posts about “the aunts” as I’ve recently figured out they are my great-great aunts. They’re parents George and Olive lived there before them, and I think it was only Regina (Ra-kee-na), Lula, and Elsaleah that spent their entire lives there and then my grandparents moved in to help but after all of the aunts died, they were just left with the house. The only difference was instead of it having elderly people in the household, now there were grandchildren around and we began to spend our birthdays and holidays there as a family.

I’ve spent countless days there throughout my life. I’ve slept on the couches and floor, trying not to look up the dark staircase. I’m pretty sure this is where my paranoia really flourished because I remember my papaw saying that there was a ghost up there. When my sister got her first iPod, she had an app that told you whether a room was paranormal or not, well this always seemed to fire up their dog Casey and once Blondie would come into the kitchen they’d race off into the living room, a half dead iPod in head ready to find the ghosts! This did nothing for my anxiety over the years I have to say!

I would go into the living room every once in a while, I would never go in there by myself though. I always went when somebody else was in there with me. However, my papaw would like to play piano in the most random times of the day, mostly when everybody was talking the mouths off, so mostly me! I would stop the conversations sometimes because I would hear these noises and realize they were papaw upstairs probably either destroying something or like I said, playing some notes on the piano. I remember a few times that I just sat on the floor by the couch and listened to him play a few keys and then watched him leave without ever saying anything about how I got there. He knew though. Once he’d leave the room, I would debate whether or not to head back into the kitchen or not to join the rest of the hens.

As I got older the house started to represent something else entirely. Since our house was so wacky I was unable to do things for myself. I was also growing (weight wise), so my family has a difficult time getting me on and off the floor. I started to feel really restless I think, and I didn’t hit my breaking point until one Christmas. I was really wanting to create homemade gifts for my family and I thought it would be a good idea to do it with my dad but I later realized that it wasn’t… He bought everything and he ended doing it all, within four days later I asked my nana if she’d feel comfortable in helping me do the crafts next year because there was no way in heck I was allowing that to happen again. If you didn’t know the background story to the annual DIY Christmas gifts, now you do!

I think that was the same year that I was given the freedom to really do things for myself. I’m only so limited to things in my room because whenever I’m in my wheelchair, the room itself gets smaller! So when my nana was letting me do things for her, like clean and organize different areas of her office or kitchen – since that was our most popular place for our talks and had the most light and space in the entire house to work on our crafts I began to enjoy it more! And I even have memories from my days in preschool where it was time to clean up from recess and as everybody was cleaning up, I’d be cowering underneath the table! I hated cleaning as a child, but since I was allowed to do what I wanted like organize in whatever way I saw fit I began to fall in love with it. Of course, asking your parents if you could your room with no seatbelt so you could reach better does not do anything to calm their nervous, but it is fun to watch them squirm I’m not going to lie!

The last two or three years were spent on trying to decorate cakes and sugar cookies. Creating our first (and probably last) Christmas bark ever! I figured out how to put on a fairly large trash bag on the can itself and open up a pop can with my toes! Towards the last I finally figured out how to open the refrigerator and that took a lot longer than I wanted to honestly! Why do they have to make those doors so heavy is beyond me!

It’s strange one of the last memories of being in that house is of me cleaning out an area of papaw’s room that I was hoping would become my office. An act of freedom that I was given became something that I did not want to do, you know? It was only fairly small corner of the room that was full of things that would come to live in my room. It feels weird to have these pieces of furniture that belong in different places in that house that are no longer there, it’s an empty space now.

I’ll remember the large amounts of light green on the interior, from the walls to the shaggy, 70’s carpet that did not like push wheelchairs. Okay, so I won’t exactly miss the carpet itself but perhaps only the feel of it.

The pink (or peach, the exact color is debatable), white, and blue bathroom that in the beginning of time didn’t exist. George and Olive had an outhouse! It wasn’t until later that they added it in and made it the smallest room in the whole house! The closets had more room than this sucker! Sidenote: The doorways weren’t made for wheelchairs either!

Always calling the kitchen the front end of the house. Nana would say all the time to us that where the kitchen was places was really a back porch, when they put in the bathroom they redid the kitchen too and added on bigger cabinets and put in a cold linoleum floor that even in the hot summer you could sit on it and your butt would feel pretty nice. However, the winter it was just standard to wear blue jeans or just stay out of there because it was so damn cold!

One of the hardest memories that’s going to be difficult to cure is whenever we’d leave the house, they lived on a block so there was two ways you could leave (well, technically three if you could park into the driveway and go to the right line) and those paths there’s some distance but they could always hear us holler bye and they’d wave with their hands or do the symbol for “I love you” in sign language as we took off to go home.

Since this has happened I often wonder if there will be a house I will live in that will make feel these things ever again? Will I continue to collect memories from every house I enter? It’s a big possibility. You’re never fully ready to put your trust into anything or apparently leave everything behind but it’s part of life. You go on and parts of me think I will be back, back then I thought it was because I’m always coming back but then once the decision was made that the house would be sold I still had that feeling. I think it’s a form of denial but who knows, maybe God or some universal divine will take me back to the memory house.

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When Your First Love Gets Married

Howdy!

February has always been that one month that you dread, but as a kid in school, I have to say I enjoyed it because back then we didn’t have any of this dating crap. We had couples that “went out” for a couple of weeks (or days) but there was no pressure to being in a relationship.

I remember every time we had to make Valentine’s Day cards. I’d make ones for my friends but I also made a couple of extras for the boys I had crushes on too. What still gets me though is that half the time, I’d have somebody else give them the cards because I couldn’t do it myself. I still have the memories of the fourth grade passing out my Mickey and Minnie Mouse cards with the cherry suckers taped on the sides and whispering to a friend to pass it to so and so. Everybody knew it was from me though, between the red face that matched the color of the lollipops completely and well, nobody had footwriting like moi!

I can say I had a lot of childhood crushes. Every person will agree with me though, it doesn’t matter how many people you chase after, nobody will ever compare to your first love.

My first crush… I  still look back on the memories of those days where he was very caring and how he could make me smile on a whim. We never dated. I just loved from afar, if you want to call it that. I’m pretty sure he knew I had feelings for him, because everybody else did, including his own family!

When we were in middle school, we had Winter Ball, a formal dance that all of the middle schoolers could attend. If you went to the dance, you could get your pictures taken by a real photographer. In the previous years, I was in a lot of group photos and this time because I knew it would be our last dance before prom, so I wanted to ask my crush to be in the picture with me and if I remember correctly I actually went up and asked him if he would. I had to go and find him in the massive crowds (the fact I never ran over my dresses was a damn miracle – can’t say anything for Junior year though!) but I did find him and we waited in line and I felt horrible about taking him away from all the fun he was having with his buddies and date. Well, that second part is a bit of a lie.

We got our picture taken and within a week later, our photos were delivered to our homeroom classes and I remember being very happy that I got this picture back. Everybody in my family was also ecstatic! My nana still has a copy of it and mine is on top of a bookshelf in my room as we speak! As for him, I remember him telling me that for a number of months his mom had it taped to the fridge and to think this poor boy wanted to continue to be friends with me after that!

I’m not bitter that he’s now married, I can’t say I’ve never been bitter whenever he’d get a new girlfriend in school. I do remember feeling really un-beautiful though, but that is normal behavior for teenagers. I say “is” because it is normal. I have realized that there was nothing wrong with me, he just wanted to be friends with me. That’s all my old crushes ever wanted to be with me, but because I knew I was failing at ever having the whole “high school sweetheart” it pretty much destroyed me in a number of ways.

When I found out he was married though, I was shocked at first, but I was also happy for him. I did borrow my mom’s shoulder that night because I just needed that reassuring I was still enough. I would have used my dad, but he doesn’t necessarily like it when his girls cry, especially over boys because all that ever makes want to do is get even so I didn’t lean on him that night.

When your first love gets married before you, at first you feel like you’re going to need a couple of glasses of wine, pint of ice cream and a shoulder to cry on. My advice for you is to one of these things, if not all of them. I think a good cry is okay, but being down on yourself about the past thinking of if you hadn’t done this or that, if you were prettier in school he would belong to you. You can’t think like that, because you can’t change the past. All you can and most importantly have to do is move on.

I would say you need to watch the best movie for this type of situation: Legally Blonde.

Ms. Elle Woods went out of her way to get into Harvard Law School. She wanted to prove to her newly ex-boyfriend that she could be wifey material despite her ditzy personality. She worked hard to become a student at Harvard and became a perfect student, suffering the wrath of his new fiancée, and yet at the end of everything when she won her case and he saw how much of a badass she really was; she realized that he was nothing to her! So she not only found a new calling in life but she also found her true love there too!

It’s so interesting how cliche the whole ending turned out, but yet it was honest. You never know where your soulmate will find you. You might be acquaintances from school or work, but you could also be complete strangers. You never know where you’ll find that person. I like to think I’m Elle in a way, I’ll find somebody one day that accepts me in all my flaws. He’ll understand my life a disabled woman and he’ll hopefully support my blog. He might even start his own blog or write a book about taking care of me and our little family in the future. Until then, I will relish in the single life one day at a time.

Tell me some of your favorite (or not so favorite) childhood Valentine’s Day memories! 

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