Open Debridement and Proximal Z-plasty

Hi All

Well we made it home last night about 9pm. My poor DH is starting to get sick with upper resp symptoms. I hope he doesn't get the flu. Today we both slept late and again in the afternoon.

We stayed at the Doubletree Inn at the Colonade and got a hospital discount of $99/nite. The hotel was very nice. The next morning was surgery at Union Memorial Hospital. This hospital was about 3 blocks from the hotel right next to John's Hopkins. This was a very clean hospital and I will have to say the most friendly hospital I have been in. Everyone from the housekeeping, security, nurses ,techs and all people greeted you with good morning , how are you and so forth.The care was that way the whole time. The pre-op routine there is a bit different then what I am used to, I got into gown and had IV started then I was walked upstairs to surgery to wait in their wait area. Dr Dellon and partner Dr Hashimi ( probably wrong spelling but sounded like this ) walk in and meet my husband. Dr Dellon is very personable. He has us go back to another room where he asks me what he is planning on doing. I guess to make sure I knew what was going to be done. He discusses the surgery with Dr H and myself ,they are looking over my leg and have me point to some of the areas.He shows me where I will expect to feel permanently numb. Permanent numbness will be a welcome sensation after all this pain. Dr Dellon is still going over things with Dr H and the anesthesiologist and then he asks if I ever heard of Dr Oz. I said I've never watched him but know he was on Oprah.He said he has been contacted by them on his work with nerve/peripheral nerve surgery He says my story is one that would be really helpful to others because of the amount of pain I have been in,length of time, number of surgeries, amount of medications I was taking, monthly cost of those meds and methods tried to manage pain . He asked if he could film me as he asks a few questions and send it to Dr Oz to see if they would be interested in my story. I thought sure,if I can help somebody not go thru all this ,go ahead. So he asked me some questions including how this has affected my life, the amount of medications I take, the expense , yrs of pain and nerve pain, etc, etc. Then I went on to be prepped for surgery and taken to OR. I could feel him drawing on my leg where he planned on doing his incisions. I'm always amazed on how many people are involved in the OR, when I look around,,then it's off to sleep.

My surgery lasted 3 hours. Dr Dellon said surgery involved 8 very complex procedures thru 4 incisions. He said each incision was a single surgical procedure done all by it's own , so to do all 4 of these procedures in one session was really unheard of. Two of the places involved having to cut into muscle. One of those was the surgery on the saphenous nerve thru the adductor canal. this is a about a 4 inch incision going from about mid medial knee up to the thigh. He said he could see all the areas where Dr N had worked on the nerve. He said the nerve was very scarred down onto muscle, tissue, ect. No wonder this hurts now since it involves muscle work. He had another incision on the medial patella to the medial patella nerve and said he had to go into the joint , I was so scarred down there, He resected the saphenous nerve and buried the ends in the muscle. I am numb from the patella to the whole medial side of my knee and from the middle of the tibia over medially halfway down.

The next incision is on the lateral side where the fibular head is located. This incision is about 3 inches and was for work on the common peroneal nerve. It was for debidement and decompression. Once again Dr D said it was so scarred down then he went on to the deep peroneal nerve and sinus tarsi. This was done thru the incision on my lateral ankle where it had been previously broken and surgically rebroken back in 2000 and 2001 and more work to trim bone last January. He said that area was very bad and took a lot of time. My deep peroneal nerve was kinked under bone, He cut between muscle and had go between the tibia and fibula. He said he visualized the 2 fracture sites where nerve was adhiesed to bone and muscle. He was just really amazed at the scarring but he was so happy he was able to save the deep peroneal nerve and not have to resect it. He also resected the sinus tarsi to help with the anterolateral ankle pain I have and will continue to have regardless of a nonunion or not of the ST joint fusion. My leg is bandaged from thigh to ankle. He said I would be able to walk afterwards and just use my cane. We went back to the hotel about 4:30. I'll keep the dressing on til the 19th after that I can remove them and start using betadine 3 times day to the incisions. I'll get the stitches out in 2 weeks at PCP office. I kept my leg elevated and ice paks to the thigh and ankle where the muscle was cut. That evening Dr Dellon called me to see how I was doing and said he would be stopping by at 9am to check on me.

At 9am Dr D came to my hotel room to see how I was doing. He had me touch several areas on my leg/foot and told me which ones were numb from anesthetic injected in and from resected nerve. I did not have any nerve pain ! He went over my surgery again and answered some questions I had. He went over my return visit at the end of January and we discussed another surgery to possibly be done at that time. This would be to the tarsal tunnel, to work on the lateral plantar nerve. I lost the use of that nerve when I had the plantar fascia ruptured and lost the tibial tendon function which is why the ST fusion was done. I have no movement to all my toes except the big toe of my foot and they kind of just flop when I walk. He was very happy with this surgery and so am I. I have not had any nerve pain since...no burning,needle sticks,zingers,throbbing aching...nothing. I should be able to get copies of surgery and Dr's report soon , so I'll be able to describe more accurately, what was done.

I am so excited to have no nerve pain !!.....I am almost afraid to be excited and happy. I have surgical pain from all these incisions and muscle involvement, but no nerve pain Grin

Let's hope no scarring up. Dr Dellon has been great, very nice, loves to explain all aspects of surgery and really cares to make you painfree. I highly recommend him for nerve issues.

Pam