It seems ages since I said that on here (probably because it is) and we sincerely apologese for that. Unfortunately having Osteogenesis Imperfecta can make life unpredictable due to fractures, operations etc, and that's what exactly happened here.
So sit down, grab a cup of coffee (or iced water in this weather) as this will be a long one!
As some of you may know, who follow us on our Facebook page, I had an operation last July 2017, to replace the metal rod that is in my femur. Just as things were getting back to normal, I rolled over in bed and had a spiral fracture of my femur, the same leg I had operated on.
I spent four weeks in hospital and was discharged on Christmas Eve (yippeee) I was so glad to be home for Christmas.
I had a quiet Christmas with Lottie and family and did plenty of resting in the hope that the fracture would heal.
Unforutenyl after many hospital appointments between January and April, the fracture was not healing as expected and it was decided by my surgeon that he would need to carry out surgery to do a bone graph with synthetic bone, and replaced the broken screws.
The surgeon wanted to do this in April, however, I'm currently doing my Master's at Universtiy and wanted to sit my exams before surgery, as I have such a good relationship with my surgeon who I've known since I was 2 he agreed, on some strict instructions!
I had the surgery on the 13th of June and despite it being a bigger operation than we all first thought, with IV morphine and other painkillers I was recovering well. The only complication I had was a rare reaction to the synthetic bone, which made my leg extremely swollen, I was assured this would go down. The only problem this caused is I was too wide for my electric wheelchair (which was on loan) so we had to contact the wheelchair services to get the next size up, this meant I was able to be discharged until this arrived.
However, 12 days later I developed a UTI which turned into Sepsis. It was a very scary time for us all of us and I became poorly quite quickly. I was immediately put onto IV antibiotics, fluids, and paracetamol.
I was quite poorly for a few days but the antibiotics showed slow signs that things were improving. I had 8 days IV antibiotics and it was then decided the IV version would be stopped and we would watch and wait.
During the time on the antibiotics and even when I had finished them I felt awfully sick all the time and the thought of food was horrible. This was blamed on the antibiotics and the sepsis.
I spent another week feeling sick and slowly trying to get myself better so I could go home.
The day we meant to be coming home, I woke up been very sick and had diarrhea. This was later diagnosed as C Diff, which was caused by the antibiotics. C Diff is basically an extreme case of sickness and diarrhea as the IV antibiotics I had for the sepsis had killed all my good bacteria in my gut meaning the bad bacteria could thrive and grow. This meant I needed a further 10 days of oral antibiotics to cure the C Diff. However, once the symptoms had eased I could go home on the antibiotics, and carry on to recover home.
I was discharged from hospital on the 8th of July, a long month after I was admitted.
Since being home things, I am still in a lot of pain due to the fracture but at least I am in my own environment.
I did go back to see my surgeon on the 13th of July, and it wasn't the best of news as the synthetic bone that was inserted hasn't mineralised yet as it should, but we are just waiting and seeing what happens when I go back to see my surgeon on the 4th of September.
So as you can see, this is why I haven't been updating our page. Now I'm home and feeling slightly more human despite the pain, I'm hoping to get back to updating you guys regularly. Also, thank you if you got this far, I know its a long post but wanted to explain in full what had happened so it didn't look like I was abandoning you guys.
Here are a few pictures of us over the last few months.
Speak soon,
Jessica (and Lottie of course) xxx
