"It was well worth the fight"

I got a call last week saying everything was a go for my surgery. My insurance overturned their original denial (I'm sure having filed with the state had something to do with that). I am extremely lucky that Dr. Henderson's office was patient and didn't cancel.

So I went in Thursday for pre-op. I was able to see my doctor and go over what he was going to do Friday. The first thing he said when he walked in the room was, "I am honestly surprised you made it." I guess I'm one of the only people to get an approval for this surgery out of network. I was proud of us.

I was the first surgery on Friday. The surgery only took 48 minutes, but they spent an hour doing x-rays before it started. Dr. Henderson decided to knock me completely out (which is how it should be at this point. They know where it goes, I don't need to tell them). After it was over he told my mom, "It was well worth the fight." What I'm assuming he meant was: your last doctor screwed up so badly and it had to be fixed. They left the battery pack but removed all the old leads, put in more electrodes, re-tunneled everything, secured the battery pack, anchored the wires better and fixed the terrible scar on my chest. I stayed the night in the hospital for pain relief, but I felt good.

The stimulator is working! And this recovery is going amazingly smooth. I feel great (all things considered). I'm sore, but compared to the last revision this is a vacation. I'm on 1/4 of the pain killers I needed last time, I'm able to get out of bed, and I've been able to do light chores. Since my headaches are now gone I feel better equipped to handle the pain.

I am so happy. I always knew the stimulator could work for me; I just needed a good doctor! I will go into more detail about my experience at Stanford in my next post, and I'll try to write one about what I've learned about getting insurance approval.