Author: kateburke63

This will be my last report on the hip replacement saga, winding it up with the nice round numbers of 10 posts and 4 weeks.  From here it appears there will be nothing interesting left to say about the recuperation [insert gesture to avoid evil eye here].

This past week, I took only one nap, finding that 30 minutes of relaxation usually does the trick when I get worn out.  I went on a shopping trip with a friend, walking and standing around for three hours, and came away with only tired feet.  I walked with my dog for an hour, up and down some good hills, ending with only wind-stiffened cheeks to complain about.  I’ve started doing gentle yoga stretches, with which my hip complies politely, and am starting to feel a little looser.  Last night, I clambered around on a steep, rocky hillside, in the dark, pushing a herd of horses from one paddock to another, with no problem.  I ate a lot of iron-rich Total cereal and dried apricots and black beans and whole grains, regaining a girlish blush in my cheeks.

The only change is with my scar.  I know it’s important to massage and manipulate a big wound to break up adhesions and unnecessary scar tissue.  And I know it’s painful.  I’m getting professional help with this soon, but once I passed the three-week, fully-knitted point, I watched a YouTube video on how to work on a scar and started doing it myself.  Ouch.  But it’s working — instead of a big, rectangular patch of hard, immovable flesh, I now have a pretty normal thigh with a rubbery scar down the middle.

In another month, my bone should be solid and I’m allowed to get back to most activities (riding!).  Another month after that, I have my final follow-up with the surgeon.  Somewhere in the 6-12 month range, I should be fully certified to do everything I will ever be able to do.  There are more markers to come, but the progress is already just incremental and I think it’s time to, quite literally, move on.

Final lesson learned: the anticipation is often (always?) worse than the reality.  But did the angst help by setting me up to be underwhelmed by the reality?  I’ll ponder this on my next long, pain-free walk.

As advertised, week two brought less dramatic change than week one did.  It started out with walking fine, doing my assigned exercises easily, using the stairs, and taking almost no meds.  It’s ending at pretty much the same spot.  I’m still using a cane or ski poles despite the ding to my pride because without support I limp just enough to make other parts of me sore.  But there were notable achievements in the last seven days:

• took the 45-minute drive to town three times and did errands, ate out and went to a movie;
• did some driving;
• cooked a couple meals and cleaned up after;
• went to the barn and did minor horse chores by myself;
• started going up and down stairs like an adult rather than a toddler;
• answered a work email that took a little thought;
• took off my surgical dressing and examined my scar;
• got on my stationary bike and rode for 10 and then 15 minutes; and
• took just a couple naps.

The last real medication I’m taking is Celebrex, a strong NSAID.  I’m supposed to take it once daily for another week, but I’m experimenting with shedding it early because I haven’t had any swelling or swelling-related pain for a long time, even 23 1/2 hours after my last dose.  We’ll see how that goes.  Then I have my baby aspirin for another couple weeks, which I’ll take dutifully because blood clots are my major paranoia.

My only big concern of the next several weeks is the serious danger of falling down that is posed by January’s ice and snow.  My poor femur is so vulnerable, as is the brand new joint.  I got some Yak Trax for my shoes and will probably carry my ski poles around a lot.  And wait eagerly for spring and for that magical 8-week time frame when the bone should be more solid.

I’m happy to complain and be snarky about my limitations and how long it takes me to do normal things, even 14 whole days out, but actually I’m amazed at my progress and very grateful.  I can absolutely see big improvements from the new joint already, and imagine there are many more to come.  I’m grateful to medical technology and my surgeon, to myself for working hard to be strong and healthy going in, to the wonderful friends, family, and superlative husband who have helped me out, and to all my body systems that are pretty miraculous at this healing and adaptation stuff.

As I said at the start, I’ve been logging all this not purely out of an exhibitionist urge, but in hopes that it might be helpful to someone else facing the same challenges.  If there is such a person out there, here a couple pieces of advice from today’s vantage point:

• make sure you use the best surgeon in your area and get your questions answered by that person or someone else if necessary;
• schedule far enough ahead that you can make preparations;
• do everything you can to be as strong and flexible, both in your muscles and in your overall health, before the surgery;
• if you can, do it in a drier and more forgiving season than winter in the Rockies;
• don’t schedule on a Friday — the first couple days out are the hardest and it’s nice to think doctors are in their offices during that time; and
• expect to be tired and fragile for some time, even if you were a dynamo beforehand.

Boy, what a relief to get out of the anticipation stage!  By the time I was in the prep room getting fussed over by nurses, I felt much more relaxed than I had in the preceding weeks!

The anesthesiologist was right — as soon as he gave me some kind of anti-anxiety medication, my memory gaps open.  I was in the prep room and then I was in the recovery room.  Crazy stuff — he told me I was totally awake when they wheeled me into the OR, gave me a spinal block injection (!!) and did whatever else they do before actually beginning, but I have only the vaguest memory of the OR ceiling and a rush of activity.  Later, at home, I kept finding electrodes stuck to me in odd places and wondered why, since no one had ever hooked them up.  “That you know of,” my husband quipped, reminding me how much happened to me without my knowledge.

The doctor was also right about my waking up alert, without a long groggy climb.  In the several hours after waking up, I had a dose of fentanyl and, later, oxycodone, even though the spinal block was still keeping me partially numb.  At first, I didn’t feel the notorious  effects of those meds that I had dreaded.  Bu when I first tried to sit up, and later when PT tried to stand me up, I was overcome with dizzy, sweaty nausea and my blood pressure tanked.  That was the worst experience thus far.  But by evening, I was able to stand up and move around and then I graduated to walk back and forth a few times in the night.

The pain has been off and on.  Sometimes the actual incision site stings, sometimes my whole thigh throbs.  The thing that really knocked it out was the muscle relaxer flexeril, better than the opioids.  In the morning, OT came to help me figure out how to put on socks and deal with the shower and such.  She told me the pain would increase for the next 24-48 hours, which was definitely not what I had been told before.  But she was right, the most intense part thus far was Saturday evening, 30 hours after surgery.  Both kinds of pain were bad and I had a hard time getting into bed.  Oxy didn’t really help but flexeril again saved me by easing the pain and pushing me into deep sleep.

On post-op day 2, the pain was fading enough that I took only Tylenol all day.  I was able to walk and do my PT exercises without too much agony.  But I felt woozy and light-headed and very weak all day.  I walked around the house numerous times and did my PT three times as directed, snoozing and grumpy the rest of the time.  I was not looking forward to many days like that.  But on the other hand I started to get handy with the walker and figured out how to carry things around so I could let my husband leave the house.

It’s post-op day 3 and I’m much better on all counts.  No narcotics last night so I feel more like myself.  The pain is really fading fast — I took half my Tylenol dose this morning and did my exercises with very little pain.  I braved our awkwardly-designed shower and got clean, which felt great but also tired me out.

I guess I’m now at the base of the long, gentle slope to get up to better than I was before.  That’s pretty good for day 3.  I’ve been warned that it will take longer than I expect, and longer than I want, to recover my energy and strength.  I imagine I can shed the walker within a day or two, but that doesn’t mean I’m going hiking.  Aside from pain, the PT at the hospital said overdoing it too soon could cause tendonitis, which doesn’t sound good at all.  So my real challenge from here is probably to take it slow enough.