Welcome back to the Learn English Podcast, the podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally.
We are back. After taking a few weeks off, we are back for the new episode, our first new episode after my surgery.
A few weeks ago, I posted an episode where I discussed the injury that I have been dealing with for the past year.
The injury happened at the end of June 2024, and it has been a really difficult year for me.
It has been a very painful year for me.
I finally was able to have surgery to repair this injury and finally start letting my body heal and recover so I can return back to normal.
So on today's episode, I want to walk you through my surgery and recovery process.
That way you can learn some vocabulary terms, some ways that we phrase things when we are talking about surgery and health and recovery.
And so you can continue to build your English vocabulary and practice your listening comprehension.
So if you're ready to learn some real life English and hear the story about my surgery and recovery, then follow along because we're about to begin.
again. Before we get started, I want to remind you to look at the description of this podcast episode for the vocabulary list. This is the list of the words and phrases that I used so you can take them and build your English vocabulary.
Now let's talk about my surgery.
So I had surgery about three weeks ago when I am currently recording this episode right now.
It has been three weeks and I have been recovering during this time.
If you missed that episode, I'm going to leave a link to the episode where I talked about my injury.
What happened was I have had back pain for most of my life for about the last 20 years, but it became much, much worse in the last year.
So in June of 2024, I had a day where I injured my back a couple of times.
And by the the end of that day, I could not walk.
I could not stand up straight.
I couldn't sit up. I was in extreme pain.
And it took a couple of months of going to the doctors and going to physical therapy and a chiropractor.
And once I finally got my results, I had three herniated discs in my lower back.
And one of them was really bad.
One of them was really herniated.
That caused so much pain for me for the last year.
There were multiple times where I could not sit in a chair.
So when I would edit this podcast, I would actually lie flat on my stomach and edit it because I couldn't sit up in a chair.
There were times where I could not stand a lot of months where I could not stand long enough to take a shower.
I had to sit down because if I tried to stand, I would just fall all over.
My leg was very weak.
I walked with a limp, which means that I walked abnormally.
My gait was a little bit funny because of how much pain I was in in the leg and because of the nerve issues I had in that foot and the strength loss I had in that foot.
So it was a really debilitating injury.
Debilitating means that you're not able to do the things that you would normally be able to to do.
You're not able to function as you normally would.
So in my case, I could not walk normally.
I could not sit in a chair.
I could not stand to take a shower.
So because I couldn't do those things, I would say that that was a debilitating injury.
Because the injury was so bad, because the herniation in my spine was so large, it had to be surgically removed.
And the surgeon told me that if he were me, he would have gotten the surgery after about two months.
I know I did not do that, but that was not because I did not want the surgery.
It was because my insurance took so long.
It took 11 months before I could get surgery.
I had to have a bunch of appointments and imaging studies and try to get some medications and physical therapy instead.
dead. So it took a long time before I was allowed to get surgery, but I finally have done it.
What I'm going to do now is walk you through that surgery day and take you through the beginning of the day and also through the last couple of weeks that I've had and just tell you about my recovery process.
Let's start with the day before surgery.
The surgeon told me that I would not be be able to walk very much for the first week, that it would be very difficult for me to move around.
And he told me to prepare ahead of time.
He told me to do my laundry, to get groceries so I would have food at my house, and to make sure someone would be able to come and check on me and help me because it would be very difficult for that first week.
To help prepare, I tried to set up everything in my room that I would need.
I had an iPad so I could watch Netflix and Disney Plus and all of those streaming apps.
I also had my old Nintendo 3DS on my bed.
So if I wanted to play video games, I could do that.
And then on the dresser that's next to my bed, I put a lot of other things as well.
A dresser is where you put clothing.
It usually has drawers and you put your clothes in it.
So I have a dresser next to my bed that has some of my clothing items in it.
And the top of it is flat, has a wide space.
So on top of my dresser, I moved a lot of the things that I would need.
I put my medication bottles there, so I would have very easy access to get my medication.
I had multiple bottles of water.
I had a lamp and I had a lot of books.
So I thought if I don't feel like looking at a screen, watching Netflix, or playing video games, then I could read books.
And that's actually what I ended up doing.
I read a lot of books when I was recovering.
But I just wanted to make sure that everything that I needed would be easy to grab, would be right next to me so I wouldn't have to move very much. I also put some snacks up on my dresser so I would have some food.
Some of the medications that I was taking were supposed to be taken with food.
So I wanted to make sure that I at least had something close by, of course, in case I got hungry, but also so I could take my medications when I needed to.
The night before surgery was a little bit difficult.
I had some trouble falling asleep, but I tried to do some meditations on YouTube.
You can find a lot of different meditations that are supposed to be very calming and help you relax.
So I did some meditations that were for surgery.
And so I did those to try to calm myself down.
And so I would be able to fall asleep and at least get some sleep the night before surgery.
Now the morning of my surgery, I woke up around 7 .30 in the morning because my my check -in time was 8 .30.
Check -in time means the time that you're supposed to arrive and tell someone at a desk that you are there.
So for example, when you are traveling, there's a check -in time for your flights.
You have to check in that you're actually at your flight and you're ready to board whatever airplane you're supposed to get on.
When you go to a hotel, they usually have a check -in time, which is the time that your room is available.
And for surgery, they also have a check -in time, which is the time you're supposed to arrive and be ready to go back for surgery.
My check -in time was 8 .30, which really wasn't that bad.
I teach English online to students who are learning it as a foreign language.
One of my students that I teach English to is also having surgery in a couple of weeks.
And she told me that her check -in time is five o 'clock in the morning, 5am.
That is way too early.
I absolutely would not want to have a 5am check -in time.
So I'm grateful that I had an 8 .31.
It was a little bit later, a little bit more normal hours.
And that I think was just better.
I'm just glad I did not have to get up too early.
My mom is the one who who came and picked me up, and she drove me to the hospital that I was having my surgery at.
The reason was because I needed to have someone there who would be my ride home.
The surgery office told me I had to have someone who would drive me home, and they needed to make sure that I had someone who would do that for me.
So, my mom had to go into the hospital with me and tell the desk that she was there with me so they knew who would be coming to pick me up I checked in I signed some paperwork saying that I wanted to get the surgery that I consented so you see that term a lot in medical terms it means that you agree to do something to consent to have surgery and then I had to pay because in the United States we do not have universal health care We do not have socialized medicine and my insurance did not cover the cost of surgery.
The surgery itself was very, very expensive.
I only had to pay 10 % for the surgery and my insurance plan also has a limit on how much you have to pay for the year.
So I actually didn't end up paying the full 10%.
that 10 % or whatever percentage, that is called a co -pay.
That is how much you pay along with your insurance to cover whatever medical services you are getting.
And in my case, I had to pay a little over $2 ,300.
That was my co -pay.
Like I said, that was less than 10%.
So the surgery itself cost more than $23 ,000.
I am glad that I have insurance because there's absolutely no way I could pay that without my health insurance but it still was pretty expensive that is still a lot of money for me that is a lot of money that I could have used for other things but of course I needed to get the surgery so I had to pay that amount after I paid the person at the front desk the receptionist took me to the back area where people wait to get surgery and my mom had to leave she was not allowed to go to the back with me so I just went by myself once I went back into the waiting area I saw that there were a lot of hospital
beds all lined up on both sides of the room so it was a giant open room that had multiple hospital beds and people waiting in those hospital beds there were curtains between each of the beds so you couldn't really see anybody else but you You could hear everything because it was just one large room with multiple nurses, multiple patients, everyone just kind of waiting to get surgery or coming out after having surgery.
When I went back there, the nurse had me change my clothes and get into a gown and put a cap for my hair.
And then I just lied down on the hospital bed and waited.
So by now it was about 8 .50 in the morning.
and I was told that I would just have to wait for about two hours.
The nurse came by multiple times to talk to me.
She had to talk about the surgery, about my medications, check my blood pressure, and just check to see how I was doing.
And then the surgeon himself came by and talked about the surgery again very quickly.
And he also asked me who he should call once I was out of surgery.
So So I told him to call my mother.
And then the anesthesiologist came.
So the anesthesiologist, I know that's a very long word. That is the person who does the anesthesia when you have surgery.
Anesthesia is the type of medication that makes you go to sleep so you're not awake when they are doing surgery on you.
And then the physician assistant, the person who helps the surgeon, she came and also talked to me.
So, I had multiple people coming and talking to me, and I was just kind of sitting on the bed, just texting my friends and texting my family members, trying to keep myself distracted so I didn't really have to worry about what was going to happen next.
In the United States, we usually use the text message system that comes with cell phones.
I know in a lot of other countries, messaging apps like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger are are very, very popular.
In the United States, WhatsApp is hardly ever used.
It's just not used here very often.
I know some of my students from other countries think that's a little bit odd because they're very used to using it, but here in the United States, we don't.
We usually use the text messaging system that's on our cell phones.
When we send someone a message, we call call that texting.
So I was just sitting on the bed, on the hospital bed, just texting everyone, texting all of my friends, all of my family members, just keeping myself distracted and waiting.
Around 1045, the nurses came and told me it was time to go back for surgery.
So they pushed the hospital bed that I was on.
I went into the surgery room.
I saw a lot of people.
i saw some people that i didn't recognize and then i saw the anesthesiologist the anesthesiologist told me that he was going to start the anesthesia i said okay and that was the last thing that i remember from being in that room the next thing that i remember is being pushed back to that large room where i had been waiting before so the anesthesia worked i was completely asleep sleep during my surgery and the first thing that I recognized when I started waking up from the anesthesia when I was being returned to that large waiting room was that the nurse was talking to me he was telling me that I
was out of surgery and the first thing that I noticed was that my back really really hurt so I was lying on my back my back was against the bed and it was very painful full.
So I remember telling the nurse that it was really painful to lie like that.
So he helped me kind of roll over onto my side.
So I would have less pressure on my back.
And he gave me some pain medications.
And I remember just having my eyes closed for a while.
I remember having a conversation with the nurse, he was asking me how I was doing, why I was getting surgery.
And I I remember answering him, but I don't think I ever really looked at him.
I think my eyes were closed for all of this.
I remember him also feeding me a little bit of Jell -O.
Jell -O is a very soft food and usually they give it to you when you're in the hospital, at least here in the United States, they usually give you that.
It's something that is not quite a liquid, but it's very, very soft. Personally, I usually do not like Jell -O.
I almost never eat Jell -O ever, but I remember it tasted amazing.
It was like one of the greatest things I had ever eaten ever.
I think probably because I had not eaten for about 12 hours at this point.
So I think I was just really hungry.
And so it tasted really good at the time, but I don't usually like Jell -O.
And if I tasted it now, I probably would not think it tasted very good.
But of course, in the moment, I liked it.
And after a while, I started becoming more aware of the conversations that were going on around me.
And then finally, I kind of opened my eyes and looked at the nurse.
And I asked him what time it was.
And he told me that I had come out of surgery at 1150.
So the surgery itself was only about an hour.
And that now it was 130 in the afternoon.
So it was 130pm. So after I came out of surgery, it took me quite a while to really wake up and become more aware of what was going on around me and actually open my eyes and look at people.
So the nurse told me that now that I was awake, I could text my mom and tell my mom to come and pick me up in about a half hour.
So my mom came a little bit after two o 'clock.
And then I changed my clothes, I changed back into my clothes, so I didn't have to wear the hospital gown.
And they put me in a wheelchair and the nurse pushed me downstairs so I could go and meet my mom.
My mom came up to the front of the hospital.
I got in her car and then we drove back to my house.
On the way back, we stopped at Burger King and we got some food because I was very hungry by that point.
I wanted to eat some food and I also had been given a lot of pain medication.
They had given me three different doses of pain medication medication after I came out of surgery.
So I told my mom that I was going to feel the best. I would probably feel all week because I had a lot of pain medication in me.
I wasn't really in any pain.
So we went and we got Burger King and then we came back to my house and I ate some food.
And then I went up to my room and I stayed in my room for the next week.
I would say out of the 24 hours that are in a day, I spent about 23 hours and 50 minutes in my room every single day for the following week.
So I would get up to use the restroom, but that was about it.
My family had to bring me food up to my bed so I could eat in my bed because it was very painful.
I wasn't in that much pain when I left the hospital.
Like I said, I had a lot of pain medication, but afterwards Afterwards, I did not have those same pain medications.
They did not give me those pain medications to take home.
I had some other pain relievers instead.
And so after the first day, I was in a lot of pain.
It was very, very, very painful.
full. So I would try to get out of bed and try to stand up and it was very difficult to do because of how much pain I had in my back.
The good thing is the pain in my leg was gone.
I was no longer limping.
That pain that I had dealt with in my leg for almost a year was completely gone but now my back really hurt because I had this incision, this cut in my back.
The incision itself was about an an inch and a half which I think is about 55 centimeters and it has healed now but of course at the time in the first couple days after surgery it was not healed so it was very painful and when I would try to stand up I actually could not stand up straight so when I would stand up I was kind of bent over bent forward I couldn't stand up straight because it just hurt too much and then I also had how to walk with my cane.
I had a cane from the previous year because I was walking with a limp and I was really unable to stand on my own.
So I'd had the cane from dealing with this injury and I knew I was probably going to have to use it after surgery and that was correct.
I had to use the cane to try to stand up and to try to walk so I could go use the restroom.
And that was a good thing that I had that cane because otherwise I don't know how I would have been able to do that.
Most of the day I was by myself.
My family members did come over, but most of the day I was by myself.
So I really needed that cane to try to help me get around my house.
So the first five, six days were really painful.
It was really difficult to stand up, really difficult to get out of bed, but by the seventh day, it just started to feel better.
I noticed that I was not in as as much pain, I was able to walk better.
And then since then, it's been getting better over time.
So after the first week, I really was able to walk a little bit more.
I was able to go up and down the stairs that are in my house.
And now that I'm three weeks out, I'm walking almost completely back to normal.
I do have some issues with my leg that was really bad, my right leg that was really bad before.
Like I said, I do not have pain but I still have a lot of weakness.
So that leg is still pretty weak.
I'm not back to normal like I am with my other leg.
So I still have a lot of rehabilitation to go through.
So rehabilitation is a long word. Usually we shorten it to rehab and that means the physical therapy, the stretches, the exercises that you do after you have an injury so you can start to heal.
I know I have a long rehab road in front of me.
I know I'm going to have to do a lot of physical therapy to get that strength back.
But hopefully, hopefully within the next three to six months, I'll be able to return to normal.
That's what my physical therapist told me before the surgery.
So hopefully I will be able to do that.
And with with that, that really is all there is to say about that surgery date and my recovery.
It's been a long road to get to this point.
It took 11 months to get to having surgery.
And I still have a couple more months until I'm back to normal.
But I'm able to sit in a chair without any pain.
I'm able to walk without a limp.
I'm able to stand up now and not scream because of of how much pain I'm in.
So I have improved a lot.
And I want to thank everyone who left a comment on the episode where I talked about the injury, or emailed me and sent me well wishes, which means that they're saying that I hope they hope I recover, and that everything with the surgery goes well.
That is called a well wish.
And I just want to thank you.
If you're one of those people, thank you so much I tried to respond to everybody I was a little bit out of it after the surgery but I really tried to respond to everyone so thank you so much I am recovering I am getting better and it really just meant a lot that you left a comment that you emailed me that you said that I you hoped that I would get better that was very kind of you and that just meant a lot to me also thank you to everyone who has listened to the podcast who has made it all the way here until the end of the episode.
If you liked this type of episode where I just kind of tell the story, I tell about a day, a story about a day.
If you like learning English in this kind of everyday real life context and you want me to do more episodes like this in the future, please let me know.
Hopefully it won't be about any more surgeries that I have in the future, but maybe we can do a type of episode like this, but on a different topic.
So if that's something thing you're interested in, please tell me about it, leave a comment, email me, just let me know if you are interested in that.
Also, a reminder to look at the description of this podcast episode.
There were a lot of terms that I said, a lot of really long words that I said, so please refer to the vocabulary list so you can study these words and hopefully start using them in conversation yourself.
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Until then, keep learning English.
