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Thoughts after the surgery


Pediatric dwarfism clinic

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[Regular patients] I think stress aggravated the occurrence of inflamm..

관리자
30 Jan 2023
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[Regular patients] I think stress aggravated the occurrence of inflammation

 

I have a story about how I got to have the Ilizarov surgery at KUMC. Because I was relatively so short than other people, I was getting regular check-ups for my height at Seoul University Hospital. At that time, the doctor there told me there were injections for growth hormone. He also told me that it costs a lot that could cause many side effects, but I wanted that therapy despite all the side effects. But since my family couldn’t afford the hormone therapy, we went to a famous oriental medical center and got medicine from there. I took that medicine for a year, and I started gaining weight and eating too much, including meat, which I didn’t use to it before. Also, it didn’t show much help for my height I quit it after a year. My pre-surgical height during my 2nd year of middle school was 153.4cm. I was teased a lot by my friends at school. On top of that, I was told to go live in Vietnam with my short height by a doctor at Seoul University Hospital. It was shocking and gave me a lot of stress.

While I was searching online around July of 2009, I got interested in the Ilizarov surgery. Luckily, I found that the surgery was being performed in New Bone Orthopedics Hospital, so paid to go there and had a detailed consultation. At the consultation, they told me that there is a technique called ISKD, and that 5~7cm of lengthening could be possible. After talking to my father, we decided to have the surgery at a general hospital, rather than a private one, so that I can get all-round care in case of inflammation or any other side effects. Then we learned that KUMC is the best among all general hospitals.

I was actually going to KUMC once a year for regular check-ups for scoliosis. Every time I went there, I saw Professor Seo, Seung-Woo, who was dissatisfied with my height growth. I asked him to refer me to Professor Song, and he called Professor Song’s nurse right away. We had a consultation session about the Ilizarov surgery and I discussed it with my father afterwards. We came to a decision and scheduled the surgery. I also went through final tests such as x-rays, blood work, and EKG.

I had the surgery on March 29th, 2010 as scheduled. I was discharged on April 14th, 2 weeks after the surgery and visited outpatient until the equinus deformity surgery. I had to stop lengthening for about 4 weeks because the bone wasn’t lengthening further. But eventually I was able to lengthen 10cm in total. Equinus deformity came about after 5cm of lengthening and after 7cm, I had to be on a wheelchair because I could not walk. I exercised a lot until 5cm but after that I didn’t because exercising was useless. Eventually I was hospitalized in early October for deformity correction and intramedullary nail insertion. I was hospitalized for about a moth after the surgery and during the hospitalization, I turned up a pin 90 degrees. I took out the pin after 90 degrees. I was able to walk on my left foot but not my right, so I had to be discharged with a pin inserted on the right side.

I took out the right pin after regular outpatient visits after discharge. Upon removal of the right pin (Ilizarov), I had a cast on for about two weeks. Since then I have been on my leg braces until now. But the professor told me to put it on only when I’m going out for a long distance. A month after that, on February 10th, 2011, I also had the left pin (Ilizarov device) removed.

But in May of 2011, I got inflammation so I took pain killers and antibiotics. But the pain was getting so bad that I went to the hospital. The levels in the blood test came out very high. So the doctor in charge told me that he would discuss my situation with the professor and let me know. I was having pain with cold chills, but the meeting with the doctor seemed to take longer and no one seemed to know what it was going to end. So I requested to give me some painkiller while I was waiting. So I waited for 2 more hours with the painkillers until the other resident doctors came out. The senior residents did some more tests and examined my inflamed leg, then asked if I could be hospitalized in the end. I said I would if the professor also agreed to hospitalization. After calling him, they told me that he agreed.

They said they would make a final decision for surgery after they do a definite inflammation response test. They showed me an x-ray of a patient who recently had a pin insertion because of inflammation and that I would be going through the same procedure. They told me to wait in the nurse’s room after I was done with hospital admission procedures. They explained that they need to know what virus was causing the inflammation after the inflammation test. During hospitalization, my leg was disinfected every day.

I had some breathing problems 3 days after the earlier surgery, so the doctor in anesthesia department wanted to delay the surgery and get some breathing tests done before another surgery. So the doctor asked me about my difficulty in breathing that happened last year, asked me and my father what we want to do. So I signed the consent form and requested for analgesic injections. But I had bloody sputum on the 2nd day, and worsened condition on the 3rd day, along with difficulty in breathing again. So they checked if it was an allergic reaction to the antibiotics I was taking, but it was the analgesia that caused those side effects. Eventually they removed the analgesia and finally decided to operate me. I was just thankful. I was able to sleep well and went into the surgery the next day.

Just like what the doctor in charge had told me earlier, the professor told me that he will be removing the nail then fixating the Ilizarov externally, after pus removal. Before the surgery, the nurses asked me questions about injections and what I was wearing. After 30 minutes, I was moved to the operating room. When I woke up in the recovery room, it was already night time. I told a nurse that I was cold and having pain in my leg. She told me that was because I had a thin pin inserted and that they are warming up my leg with some air system. I had to ask for pain killers. The inflammation was examined until the date of discharge, and by that time the level had gone down to 6.0.

On May 13rd, 2011, while I was in pain with inflammation, my father gave my mother divorce papers to sign. So I had to stay at my step-mother’s place and she wasn’t very nice to me. Maybe due to these reasons my inflammation level went up to 18 again and the professor said it needs to be removed urgently. So I had injections around the scar again and went through the process of scraping out the things inside. It was awfully painful, but that was only way how the inflammation was going to be completely removed.

I was asked to write about my experience throughout the surgery. So I was writing it on my laptop, including the part of me being angry because of the inflammation. My step-mother saw the things I wrote on my laptop and got angry at me. I said it wasn’t, but in the end I was kicked out of the house and had to live in factory housing.

At the factor, I couldn’t wash or disinfect properly. I only got to eat instant noodles which gave me an upset stomach on the day I was supposed to go to the hospital. My father told to postpone going to the hospital because of his work. When we went to the hospital on July 7th, the level had gone up to 80. After looking at the x-ray, they suggested bone marrow graft. On July 21st, 2011, I was hospitalized and treated at the psychiatric department first. Then on August 8th, 2011, the thin pin was removed and put on a cast

2 weeks later, I took out the cast and put on the Ilizarov device again. My inflammation level was checked throughout hospitalization, but the level was either the same or fluctuating repeatedly, which made the doctors put off the surgery for bone marrow graft. After the level was finally within the normal range, I was able to schedule for a graft surgery. However, I was told later on that a final decision has been made to not have a graft surgery.

My condition got better and didn’t have to take antibiotics so I was discharged on September 17, 2011. On my visit in October, the doctor told me that the bone was generating well and that it was a good decision to not have the surgery. When I went to the hospital about a month later to register for scoliosis disability, the doctor told me that my condition had gotten much better than a month ago. He said he would operate me in a month, when the two holes fill up in the bone. When I first had inflammation, there were so many things going on in my family, like people were even calling my phone to look for my dad. Eventually, people from some a loan bank came in to our house uninvited and put red stickers all over my house. Our house was about to be put on public sale.

I am guessing all kinds of stress built up that led to inflammation. Also, I think environmental factors (cigarette, stress) could have affected. Inflammation usually occurs because of lack of disinfection, but in my case, it was mostly due to stress and cigarettes.

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