Caring For Your Spine After Surgery
Welcome to Joyce Uni Healthcare's Spine Health blog. This blog's purpose is to provide information on care for your spine. The first blog is about Caring For Your Spine After Surgery.
While in the hospital for spine surgery, you have the help of doctors, nurses, and physical and occupational therapists. But once you get home, how can you ensure you care for your spine after surgery without the constant supervision of everyone at the hospital? Today we will go over how you can care for your spine at home while ensuring that you are healing and not causing any damage to your surgery site.
First, you want to ensure you continue getting up for short walks once you get home. Dwight Tyndall (MD, FAAOS) shares in his article "10 Tips for Recovering at Home after Outpatient Spine Surgery" that "daily exercise is important for recovery and to build strength and maintain muscle tone." Start with short walks and slowly build up your stamina for longer walks.
If you are required to wear a brace after surgery, make sure you wear it for walks and daily activities. Braces are a great way to help you remember things you cannot do, such as bending or twisting.
Check out this video from Dr. John Edwards on Post Surgery Restrictions for more information on what you can do after surgery.
While you are recovering at home, remember to take your pain medications. While in the hospital, the nurses made sure that you stayed on track when your medications were due to take. However, at home, it might be hard to remember. Use your alarm on your phone to remind you when it's time to take your medications. The medications that you might be prescribed are muscle relaxers and pain medications. When you stay on top of your pain, it makes healing easier. If you are in constant pain, you cannot do the things that will help you heal.
Tyndall also talks about making sure that you eat healthily. You will want "a balanced, low-fat diet rich in fresh vegetables and fruit. Because you will be less active during recovery, avoid heavy, high-calorie, or fattening foods. Eating well is essential for a successful recovery and will help keep your weight under control after your recovery is over."
You will also want to make sure to eat plenty of protein. Protein helps repair damaged body tissues. Good protein sources are fish, seafood, lean poultry, nuts, and seeds.
Part of your recovery at home will be caring for your incision site. Ensure you follow your providers' guidelines on caring for the incision. Some instructions might include covering the dressing/incision during showers and cleaning it gently with soaps that will not aggravate it. You might need to follow up in the surgeon's office 10-15 days after surgery to remove any stitches or staples.
Now onto when to call your surgeon. There are a few key signs that there might be a complication with your recovery and that you need to call your surgeon to get direction on what to do. Those signs are:
- Numbness in your arms or legs
- Fever above 101 degrees
- Drainage from the incision site
- Swelling or pain in your legs
- Severe pain
Jesika, this is a great blog post about how to care for yourself after spine surgery. My daughter actually had a buckle fracture this summer in her spine and some of these tips would have been very helpful. I love that you talk about having to move around and walk but also wearing your brace all the time to avoid bending and twisting which can make recovery harder. The part about when to call your provider is especially good, I think. It is important to call your doctor when you need to but not too often... haha. Overall, great job!
ReplyDeleteJesika, awesome blog post! It was very professional and educational. My brother-in-law has to have spine surgery in a few weeks, so I'll have to share the video and websites with him. These tips will also help me as I help take care of him. I love how you included of a variety of things that are important for caring for your spine. It is very important to know the signs and symptoms of complications post surgery to know what to do or when to call the doctor. Great blog post!
ReplyDeleteJesika, I really enjoyed reading your blog post. I love how you went into detail on the importance of not only pharmacological adherence to proper medication administration, but also the non pharmacologic ways to ease pain during the healing process. The extra information on when to reach out to the surgeon was a great touch. Sometimes patients get overloaded with information after surgery about appointments, and where to pick up prescriptions. These things are all important but we want to avoid any complications that could very well occur after this kind of medical procedure.
ReplyDeleteWell done!