The cheese that broken the camels back

It is a little late to be blogging, but I haven't posted anything for a little while and I have things to be thankful for.  Firstly, I am thankful I have my first nephew!  My sister Jade and her husband Matt welcomed their first son, Leo Buddy Krok, a week ago today.  He is absolutely adorable.  It has been a far from easy pregnancy for them and  I have such admiration for my little sister for the way she has handled it all.

What kind of Aunty would I be without putting up a photo!

Secondly, I have my Mum here for a few days to visit.  Always grateful for that!

And lastly in some good and not so good news...

One of the first days of the school holidays, we had a lazy home day. I LOVE pyjama days like this and having all four of us home lazing around is my idea of the perfect day. Until about 2pm when the boys start to get a bit of cabin fever. Anthony kindly got the boys dressed and they headed out of the house for a while. They hadn't been gone more than ten minutes and I did a little tidying up; you know, putting away the odd toy here and there.

As I gathered up some stray pieces of grated cheese on the floor, I felt and heard a disgusting "snap".

My heart sunk and I had a sickening feeling that I had broken some of the metal in my back.

The initial pain wore off rather quickly and I thought perhaps all was ok, but as I started to move around to test for pain, I could hear a creaking and grinding like an old door hinge.
From then on, I was pretty sure I had broken some piece of the hardware.

I arranged some x-rays and they confirmed my inkling and there was indeed a broken titanium rod staring back at me.

My surgeon was away til the end of the school holidays so I had to wait to see him for a couple of weeks but that was alright. I felt everything would be alright in the end.

This isn't the first time I had broken my rods. Four years ago I found out I broke my rods in four places due to my spine not fusing properly like we had hoped. This meant re-doing the entire surgery and fixing up the additional damage.

I knew that if the bone hadn't fused AGAIN, it was definitely another surgery. If the fusion 'appeared' solid (appeared as you can't really tell for certain without opening you up to see), it could just be a smaller surgery, or possibly more of a wait-and-see approach.

Today I saw my surgeon. On the way there, I felt good. My "gut instinct" has become my most proven method for determining a potentially difficult situation in the past and is pretty much always right.

Us religious folk call it "the Spirit" or "the Holy Ghost" guiding us, others may call it "intuition" or just "gut instinct". Whatever your belief, I am thankful I have such guidance. I trust in this feeling.

From the scans I have had done, my fusion appears to be fairly solid. There is certainly a break just above my pelvis and likely a broken screw and the adjacent rod is likely to break as a result, but it is fixable through a smaller surgery. My surgeon asked for some time to formulate the best way to do this as apparently I am a bit of a difficult case - I just like to be unique :)

So whilst it is possible I may be soon heading into the operating theatre sooner than I would like, I am thankful it won't be as big as my previous two surgeries and that it can be sorted. I am thankful.

I know its kind of gross but here is my lumbar spine xrays (if you are good at reading x-rays you can spot the break on the right hand rod).