I'm a working woman...almost

I promised a post about my time in the hospital and I will post one sometime soon. I started it last night and it's a little longer than I thought it would be.

Anyhoo, as you can see from the title of this post, I'm going back to work! Well, I'm going back to work next week very part time. I'm starting out working 2 - 3 days per week, up to 4 hours per day. It's not a lot, but I don't think I could handle more than that right now. Surprisingly, I'm kind of glad to be going back to work so early. Actually, it's only 2 weeks early because I'll be 4 weeks post-op next week Tuesday and I had planned on returning at 6 weeks.

I have come so far in the past 3 weeks. I keep showing Dustin the new tricks I can do. Sometimes he is impressed; other times I think he's worried I'm going to hurt myself.
Here are the things I can do that I couldn't right after surgery:

1. I can finally take a shower by myself and I can stand in the shower to wash my hair.
2. I can stand up from the couch, bed and almost all chairs without the assistance of my crutches.
3. I can get dressed by myself.
4. I can get in and out of the car by myself.
5. I can sit in a recliner - believe it or not, it was very uncomfortable for the first couple of weeks, I could only sit in a bed.
6. I can get rid of the TED hose I had to wear 23 hours each day.
7. I'm only taking my medication once every 8 hours or so.
8. I can stand with my surgical leg straight and it looks like nothing has ever happened to me - Dustin gets mad when I do this.

Here are the things I still can't do:
1. I can't take a bath - I tried getting in and out with my clothes on but I'm not quite as steady as I would like to be.
2. I can lift the heel of my surgical leg off the ground but I can't lift my entire foot off the ground quite yet.
3. I can't - well, I'm not supposed to drive.
4. I can't sleep on my surgical side.
5. I can't completely get rid of my medication quite yet.
6. I can't sleep in very long because I get too sore laying bed. :(
7. I can't quite bend over all the way in order to pick things off the floor.

I know there's more things I can/can't do but I'm thankful for the progress I've made so far. Thank you to all of you that have emailed me encouraging notes this past week; I needed them.

I saw this wonderful quote on another hip dysplasia patient's blog and I love it!
"PAO: the mother of all hip surgeries. No, this is NOT your grandmother's hip replacement."
So true!

Kari