Whether it’s a rodding procedure or a cervical fusion, the decision to operate should be carefully weighed with your healthcare providers. You will probably have a billion questions to ask your surgeon, among them are some of the more obvious like what are the side effects? What are the risks? What will post-op care look like? Will therapy and rehab be needed?

In this post I wanted to address some specific questions that may be directly related to an orthopedic operation. Having had multiple rod related operations at various ages, I have had my experience of pre and post – op care.

Question for Pre-Op:

1. How will this effect growth and mobility?
Depending on the age of the child and the child herself, operations may impact the eventual height of the patient. Sometimes rods may need to be replaced in order to keep up with a growing child, or other times knowing how mobility may be affected can help you decide whether or not to go through with the operation.

2. How will this impact future fractures?
For rod surgeries you should definitely ask about the procedure should there be a fracture in that area. This is a good question to ask so that if a fracture were to occur you will be prepared to handle the situation appropriately, and without causing more damage to the rod area.

3. Will a different or new adaptive piece of equipment be needed?
Sometimes a new mobility device may be needed to help with either rehab after the operation or to adjust to life after the operation. If that is the case it’s usually a good idea to get started on ordering that equipment well in advance in order to have it in time and ready for post-operative care. For instance, when I had my first rod surgery my personal wheelchair was not able to recline, however I needed a reclining chair in order to support the massive cast. By the time that wheelchair order had finally been placed and delivered to my house I was already adjusting to sitting upright in my own chair!

Questions for Post-Op:

1. Instructions for school/aides
While parents and therapists may already know the routine for post-op care, if your child is of school age it is always a good idea to get a written doctor’s instructions of what to do and what not to do for school officials. Whether this may include pain medication or different ways of carrying the child, all of this should be ‘officially’ written by the doctor. It will prevent potential instances of confusion and accidents!

2. Timeline for pain management
A good measurement of how well the surgery went is knowing the timeline for pain. How long will the discomfort last? What are ways to mitigate the pain without medication? At what point should the patient feel ‘back to normal?’ There is a difference between recovering from the operation and recovering from a fractured bone. In other words, even if a bone needed to be broken during an operation — the pain of having gone through an operation may be different from the pain of the healing fracture. Be sure to ask about both!

3. Learning how to self-transfer
When I was younger I was unwilling to REST and take the time to recover from an operation. My parents often caught me standing in my cast, or attempting to crawl around the floor, or even transferring myself from my wheelchair to bed. If your child is able to self-transfer be sure to know when is a good time to start allowing him or her to do this on their own. Jostling a freshly operated area has many risks and dangers to it, many of them preventable! 

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