(9th Blog Post by “Bert & I” on Behalf of Recovering Ali)

Ali was discharged from hospital today — Day 9 post surgery.

Saddling up … and ready to ride again!

She drove herself out the front door of Kunming Tongren Hospital in her C300 Permobil chair and straight into the London Taxi driven by brother Mattias for the short ride back to her apartment. She’d hoped to drive herself in her C300 the whole way (about half a kilometer) home,  but facing torrential rain and flooded streets she welcomed the lift.

Discharge involved a final CT scan + ultrasound of her legs to guard against the risk of venous thrombosis. The handling required for either a CT scan or MRI is always tough for Ali, and today proved no exception. So she was pretty tuckered out by the time she returned home and was helped back into her own, much-beloved Flex-a-Bed.

Hopefully back to rehab next week …

And then she went to sleep for the longest unbroken rest she has had since well before her surgery on the 14th of May.

Tomorrow (Friday in Kunming) Bert & I hope to turn the reins of her blog back over to Ali  so that readers can start to get a first-hand account of what she has experienced.

The nursing care at Tongren Hospital has been excellent by any standard, and her neurosurgeon, Dr. Liu Yansheng, has fully validated her decision to choose him for this most exacting of neurosurgical procedures.

The only “surprises” from the surgery were the extremely high intracranial CSF pressure and that her vertebral lamina had been worn paper-thin, evidently by the sustained high internal pressure.

Kunming team leaders, Dr. Zhu Hui and Dr. Liu Yansheng, can only recall one other similar case of such high pressure of more than 1,000 similar surgeries. In other words, Ali did not have much time left before the damage would have been irreversible, with mortal consequences.

But … she appears to have moved just-in-time to commit to the surgery … and so Ali lives to fight another day!

Not bad for 9 days out … 🙂