On April 8, while a good chunk of the country eagerly awaited a total solar eclipse, Gabe and I headed to a surgical center in Provo so he could have tubes put in his ears. After getting checked in, we waited in the very crowded waiting room for them to call us back. Finally, they took us to a restroom where he changed into a hospital gown top (they let him keep his pajama pants on). The gave him this sweet little stuffed animal, and he was in good spirits leading up to the procedure. We watched Bluey until they took him back for surgery.
I went back into the crowded waiting room during his surgery. I have to say I really wasn't impressed with this surgical center. Apparently, they're in the process of building a new one because this one is clearly inadequate. The surgery went well, and they cauterized his adenoids in addition to putting tubes in. They brought me into the recovery room, which he shared with probably 3 other kids, all separated by curtains. It was such a sad room. I watched them wheel a sleeping little girl past where Gabe was, and then when she woke up, she started screaming because of pain, disorientation, and general discomfort. I felt so bad for all the staff in this room! All these poor babies!
Gabe was no exception! He. Was. Miserable. He was screaming, thrashing, trying to pull his IV and other vital monitoring cords off of him. His throat hurt, he felt so disoriented. I finally crawled into his bed with him to hold him. I had to hold his arms down so he wouldn't pull on things and hurt himself. This was probably the one time that I wished I had some kind of streaming app on my phone. I finally remembered YouTube, and found some old cartoons for him to watch to distract him. It was such a miserable experience, and I just wanted to cry right along with him. Thankfully, he finally calmed down and came back to his normal self.
By the time we left, we was in a much better state. I picked him up a smoothie to eat on the way home, and let him keep watching the cartoons on my phone (something I NEVER allow). I brought him up to my room, and we watched a movie while he continued to recover. After the movie, we tuned into watch some of the Eclipse coverage. The trickiest part of the rest of the day was keeping him settled and resting.
The next day, he was back in school.
Meanwhile.....
(Brian again, thought you were done with me? Think again)
Remember when I said I went skiing one last time with the boys? Just kidding! Well, the boys didn't go again, but I loved riding on my new snowboard so much that I had to take one more shot at it before the season (and life as I knew it with two wrists) was over. I ended up getting an Ikon pass for the 2024 season and they allow you to go to Solitude at the end of the 2023 season with it. So I headed up one last time (really the last time, I promise).
I happened to go on the day of the solar eclipse, and as I got to the top of the mountain in the early afternoon, I noticed everybody milling around looking up. Finally it hit me that the solar eclipse was happening right then. Unfortunately, it was pretty cloudy, but I did catch this picture on my phone.
I only got 7 seconds in the solar eclipse stare this time though. Just kidding, I didn't look at it, except accidentally when I forgot there was an eclipse.
After that, the fun was over, and reality hit hard. To describe why though, I first need to give you a brief history of Brian's life. Over the course of the next 4 hours, I'll be describing ... just kidding. In March of 2023 (about a year before this point), I was working out very heavily at a little kickboxing gym called 9round. You would go through a circuit training over 9 rounds where you do jump rope, something with weights, hit some bags, hit some pads with a trainer (hopefully not the trainer, though it wasn't unheard of), and did some core body workouts. Around that time I was pushing myself pretty hard, going ~5 days a week, and pushing harder with dumbbells. One particular day I noticed my right hand was a little irritated after my workout, but didn't think much of it, it had felt that way before and usually got better within a week or two. Then at work I picked up my laptop with my right hand and I felt a sharp pain on the back of my right hand. So sharp that I basically had to drop the laptop and couldn't pick anything up that day with it.
I had small problems like this before, and usually it would heal itself after a week or two (like I mentioned), but this time it never seemed to heal properly. There was one moment when we went on a trip to Disneyland (surprise) and when I came back I felt like it was doing really well again. I started hitting the gym hard again (literally), and this time the pain immediately came back into my right hand. And then it kept happening, and kept persisting, and kept hurting.... I stopped hitting the bags or anything with my right hand and gave it a couple of months. It still hurt. I stopped working out completely for about a month, it still kept hurting. It hurt doing the smallest of things, even just holding my hand in the air above my head would often make it ache.
I went to physical therapy, and he told me I had a TFCC injury, which is located here:
It indeed hurt around there but also radiated pain up my entire hand and down my arm it felt like sometimes. So I bought the braces and did the exercises. I stopped working out my right arm almost completely to let it heal. It still just hurt. The exercises made it hurt even more. Eventually the TFCC injury healed up, and I could feel it was much better, but it still felt like something was wrong. Eventually I got to the point where I felt well enough to do a small project in the woodshop - I made a small drawer for spices underneath our stove. The project went great, but as I was staining it at the very end, I again felt that sharp pain in the back of my hand. I had hurt it again, in exactly the same way.
I got an MRI on my wrist which showed a tear in the scapholunate, which is here:
The physical therapist recommended me to a surgeon at this point (probably in November/December of 2023). The surgeon first told me, "you need to stop working out or get surgery." I then explained everything I had done, which basically included stopping working out, and he told me I had done all the right things and the solution was likely surgery. He said there were 4 levels of tears in ligaments in the hand:
1) Minor tear, just rest and the body will heal itself
2) More tearing, surgery can help with these but sometimes they will heal on their own as well
3) Even more tearing, enough that surgery is required and they pin the ligament to the bone to heal properly
4) Complete tear, where the ligament is no longer attached. Surgery is absolutely required for this.
He said I was probably in the 2-3 range but they wouldn't know until surgery. I decided to set a date AFTER snowboarding season in the beginning of April, since at that point I had already gone snowboarding with a wrist brace and decided it didn't bother my wrist at all to do that (as long as I didn't use it for pushing myself up, etc).
After debating for months and months if I should even get the surgery, Devri finally stopped me at some point and told me that it was clearly affecting my life - I couldn't workout the way I wanted to, I couldn't do any woodworking whatsoever, I was severely limited in many ways. The only thing that seemed to not bother it was snowboarding, and that was just because I had a stiff brace on the entire time. I decided to go ahead with it.
On April 11th, 2024, I went into my first surgery ever (unless you count wisdom teeth). The official procedure was a right wrist arthroscopy (they put 4 holes in the back of the wrist to use cameras to see what's going on) with triangular fibrocartilage complex (check out the TFCC injury), scapholunate interosseous ligament repair (fix the torn ligament), and extensor carpi ulnaris debridement (clean up the ECU tendon, it was really irritated from kickboxing, this is on the side of the wrist right around that bone that sticks out and connects the upper wrist all the way back to about your elbow, so it covers a lot of ground).
Now, at the Saville house we are no stranger to surgeries. Devri has been in for many at this point, even when she was a child, so this felt like old hat to us. It was strange being on the other end of it though... marking my hand to say "cut this one" for the doctor, getting an IV, and being wheeled back into surgery. Most importantly, we were wondering how I would come out of anesthesia. Would I be tired grumpy like Devri? Would I be anxious and sad like Gabe? Would I be funny like I was after getting my wisdom teeth out?
Spirits were high as we went in early in the morning.
I got my luxurious, fancy robe and party hat.
They wheeled me back and I lost consciousness pretty quickly. They took pictures of inside my wrist. If you look closely, you'll see how there's stuff inside of my wrist. Also note how my name is on the pictures. Finally, you can see that these were originally JPEG images.
Ok, clearly I have no idea what any of those pictures are. The doctor told Devri, but she didn't know the terms and I was extremely unhelpful as I was still out cold. But now you've seen inside of my hand, and I think we're all better because of it.
(Cue the drumroll) And the answer about how I was coming out of anesthesia is.... I think I'm funny (even if I'm not).
I cracked a lot of jokes and was very, very happy. I think I was joking with the nurses even before they wheeled me back (though I don't remember anything I said) and with Devri immediately after seeing her. I didn't even notice if she was anxious (though it was clear later that she was at that point, especially since it took them awhile to bring me back, I think? Honestly this whole part is very fuzzy to me for some reason...
Devri/nurse/flying elephants told me that my TFCC was structurally sound but they ended up pinning my scapholunate ligament and then cleaned up my ECU tendon as planned. I found out later that the pinning meant the tear was a level 3. The doctor apparently also said that the ligament tear would never have healed on its own, so it's good thing I had the surgery done! Unfortunately, pinning also meant that I would have a cast for 6 weeks, a brace for 6 more weeks, and then finally be able to start using it again after 3 months (if they didn't pin it, I would only have a brace for 6 weeks I believe - no cast).
After a couple/few minutes/hours/days/years (time had no meaning to me that day), they discharged me and we got in the car to go home. Here I am, look how happy I was. (note: I said "was" on purpose)
Devri got me settled up in our room in a chair, I turned on a movie and pretty quickly conked out if I remember right. Either that, or I was on an acid trip the whole time. Here's my fancy temporary "cast":
Roughly about that time, Devri brought me some chicken noodle soup to eat. I looked at it, looked at the spoon, looked at my right hand, looked at the spoon again, looked at my right hand again, and suddenly realized I had no idea what I just gotten myself into. I had literally no idea how to eat with my left hand. Same thing with even getting a drink from my water bottle. Ambidextrous Brian was nowhere to be seen and would take months to come out. What I did do was try to stretch out my right thumb (like a fool) and immediately had a very sharp pain, felt even through all of the drugs. I did not do that again. I found out later that the pins were on my thumb side of my hand. I don't know why I thought they would be on the back of my hand, but that's what I thought would have happened.
More seriously, I wanted to say something about Devri during this whole process. Getting surgery was one of the hardest decisions and hardest things I've ever done, and I absolutely would have been helpless and lost without Devri there the whole time. It's hard being on the receiving end of help after surgery for the first time in my life, but I'm so glad my partner in crime was there with me. She did practically everything for me for the next few weeks...
Devri got me a new water bottle lid that I could open with one hand, so here I am showing off my mad left hand skills at opening a bottle.
Just to give you an idea of the pill schedule. I was on a lot of hard drugs for a few days.
After two weeks, I went back in to get the cast. They pulled off the temporary brace and I finally got to see their handiwork. Imagine my surprise as I found this (warning for the squeamish!):
Yes, those are basically just long nails, bent over and capped at the end.
Note the 4 holes on the back of my hand for the cameras and the long cut on the ulnar side where they cleaned up my ECU tendon.
I still had my right arm marked with "Yes" from just before surgery. It's like they didn't even clean up after themselves.
Getting the cast was fascinating, mostly because I've never had one. They wrapped up the sites pretty well with gauze and stuff, then put this soft stuff all around.
Like a mummy, but 100% less brain removal.
The cast itself is just this fabric that you get wet and then wrap around it and it hardens. I know everyone else knows this, I just didn't! The best is when they tell you multiple times not to get it wet, then immediately get the cast tape soaking wet and put it on your arm. I wanted to tell them not to get it wet...
My finished cast.
I meant to have Rachel write on it, I meant to have friends write on it. But apparently I'm just not that person. I can't stand bumper stickers because I can't commit myself that much to any sticker. (side story) I got a new laptop recently and it was the same color and style as Devri's, so in the interest of being able to figure out whose was whose, I decided I had to get a sticker. It took me a week and a thousand amazon searches to finally find one that I liked enough to put on it. I just can't commit to stickers, or writing on casts apparently.
Devri again:
I can confirm that Brian is funny coming out of anesthesia. He was super sweet and only got frustrated that I couldn't answer all of his questions about what happened during the surgery using the technical names that he was familiar with. I thought I was a good conveyer of information; I'm just not a doctor.
He was pretty miserable on the way home, and wasn't too excited that I stopped at a store to try to find a better cap for his water bottle (he's a water bottle addict, and I knew he needed to be able to open it on his own.) I helped him upstairs when we got home and tried super hard to stay on top of his meds so he wasn't in pain.
He fought through the frustrations of having his main arm out of commission, and I was amazed by how quickly he became proficient using his left hand. He, of course, got back to work much sooner than I thought he should have, but that's Brian for you.
So a recap. First week of April: Spring Break
Second Week: two surgeries.
Third week: Stay tuned.
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