Arm Surgery

Caution: Some of the photos in this post may not be appealing to some. There is exposed muscle and bone from my surgery. Just a warning!

So as I've mentioned before, I struggled with arm pain since even before my diagnosis. The pain was due to a tumor that was inside of my arm bone. The tumor was doing two things: it was eating away at the surrounding bone in my arm AND it was putting pressure on the bone that was still there. That combination led to some difficult pain in my arm. In order to deal with the tumor, radiation was the best course of treatment. However, there was concern from multiple oncologists that radiating the tumor would eventually lead to a large cavity in my arm bone. This cavity, along with the weakened surrounding bone, would put me at greater risk for a pathological fracture. The orthopedic surgeon said that these pathological fractures can be very tricky to fix and can, ultimately, be very detrimental.

About the middle of June we met with Dr. Groundland, an orthopedic oncological surgeon to discuss the options. There were a few different options:

1. Perform surgery prior to radiation. This would involve scraping out as much tumor from inside my arm bone as possible, filling the void with cement, and inserting a plate and screws for added stability.

2. Perform radiation and see what happens. It may be possible to irradiate the tumor and have my arm heal just fine without issues.

3. Perform radiation and then, if my arm breaks, do surgery to try and save my arm. This is the least preferable option, obviously.

After some pondering and discussion, we elected to go with option #1. I preferred to be cautious and just make sure our bases were covered. Not doing surgery prior to radiation ultimately left me with the chance of not having a functioning left arm and that just wasn't worth it to me. So, surgery it was.

On July 3rd, I was scheduled to report for surgery at 3:30 pm. I was the last scheduled surgery of the day, which is never fun. Unfortunately, surgery ultimately didn't happen until 7:30 pm. However, while waiting I was able to visit with family and a good buddy from college, Jake, stopped by to say hi. It was great to visit with him and catch up with him! He's a stud.

Surgery lasted for four hours and I made it back to my room at the Huntsman Cancer Hospital around 12:15 am on July 4th. Dr. Groundland said that we made the right decision in electing for surgery. While there were some parts of my bone that looked strong, he said there were several areas where the bone was grey and very feeble. We were glad to hear that we made the right decision. As part of the recovery process, I have had an infusion added where a bone regrowth drug is administered via IV to help my bone regrown. I had that first infusion a couple of weeks ago. It felt like I'd been run over by a truck the following day! haha I sure hope it helps! There will likely be a couple more of those infusions moving forward...

Dr. Groundland said that the recovery process for a surgery like this would be rather painful. However, I've lucked out. I have had no pain to speak of, other than some soreness in my bicep when I move my arm a certain way. But I received no block after surgery and took just a couple tramadol after surgery prior to physical therapy. I took some tylenol for a couple of days, but by the time I made it home on the 5th, I was basically off of pain meds.

They started me on physical therapy on the 4th. Just some simple arm movements to help keep my shoulder joint loose and functioning. I was asked to get up and take some laps every couple of hours to keep me from clotting. I've continued with the PT at home and my arm movement has improved significantly over the last couple of weeks. All in all it was a successful surgery. 

I had radiation done on my arm on July 11th. It was a simple in and out deal. Hopefully that's the end of the tumor!