My hospital stay in a nut shell (hopefully)

I promised you a post about my hospital stay, so here it is. Remember, my brain may be a bit foggy because of all the medication I was on at the time so this is what I remember. Dustin may remember things a bit differently. :)

I think I'll start with the day of surgery. We (my mom and I) decided it would be a good idea to drive down to Tacoma the morning of surgery instead of staying in a hotel because we didn't think anyone would sleep very much anyway, so that's what we did. I believe we left our house around 2:30 a.m. because I had to check in at the hospital at 5:30 a.m.

My state of mind at this point in time was pretty good. I was nervous but not so nervous that I couldn't function. I did the driving to Tacoma because Dustin was doing field work until about 2 a.m. so he needed to sleep.

We checked in about 5 minutes late because a) I got us lost 2 times :) and b) the hospital was under construction and we couldn't figure out where we had to get in. Turns out I was supposed to be in J wing, floor 5. (Whatever that means. The hospital is HUGE!) Anyway, once I got to J wing, floor 5, I was instructed to don a highly fashionable gown and a lovely pair of socks. Then the waiting began. I was originally supposed to have surgery at 8 a.m. but because Dr. Mayo was tied up with another patient until 11 p.m. (or was it 1 a.m.? I don't remember) the night before, he bumped my surgery to 10 a.m. While we were waiting for Mayo to arrive, there are a whole lot of other things you need to go through. They have to prep you for surgery. I had a nurse come in and ask me if I knew why I was here and what I was going to have done. I, of course, said yes, I know why I'm here. I'm here to have hip surgery. That got me thinking, do other people show up to a hospital, check into the surgery ward and not know what's going to happen to them? Weird.

Anyway, once I was in my gown, I have my IV port in my arm (I think that's what you call it), the anesthesiologist came in and talked to me for awhile as well a continuous trail of nurses doing various things like asking me what hip I was having surgery on, my families medical history, etc. Mayo finally came in around 9:30 (I think), marked my hip with his initials and asked if I had any final questions. I didn't, so we were good to go. They just had to finish prepping the OR.

My state of mind during this whole pre-surgery ordeal was pretty good only because I had my family there. Both of my parents were there, as well as Dustin and my sister, Christie. I think the only thing that kept me from going off the deep end was the fact that we tried making a joke out of everything. Dustin and Christie tried to lighten the mood even more by unlocking my bed and shoving it across the room with their feet and then pulling it back again. This went on for, I don't know, a good 15 - 20 minutes until I got fed up. Then, Dustin decided to raise up my bed, and then lower it down again. So up and down I went for another 5 min. I didn't think this was a really fun game.

Finally the nurse came in and said it was time for surgery. Up until this time, I was fine but when it was time to say good-bye to my family, I lost it. I started crying, so did my sister and mom. It was hard for me to say good-bye. I was so nervous!! The nurse wheeled me into the OR and had me move from my bed onto the operating bed. The nurse that prepped me for surgery was really, really nice. I can't for the life of me remember her name but she was really good. She gave me warm blankets when I was cold and reassured me that everything was going to be ok while I cried. It kind of freaked me out when the other nurses came in the OR and started setting up some of the equipment Mayo would be using. You could kind of hear them clinking together as they set them out. I didn't see the array of tools he had but I could almost imagine what they looked like.
Then the anesthesiologist came in and gave me some medication to calm my nerves. I wish he would've given me a bigger dose because it seemed like it made me sleepy for a couple of minutes until they started to put in my epidural, then I was back to normal. The anesthesiologist tried to get the epidural needle (or whatever they are sticking in) into my back the first time but couldn't get it in. Boy, did that hurt. It felt like he was jabbing something into my back and poking at my bones. Evey time I expressed my discomfort, he told me that I had to lay still and then he would try again. Meanwhile, the nice nurse once again reassured me that everything was going to me ok and tried to hold me super still so the anesthesiologist could do his job. After trying and failing 3 times, he decided to use a different route in my back and got it in right away.

The part I feared the most about this surgery was the part when they put the mask on your face and tell you to count backwards from 100 right before you go to sleep. The whole thing scared me. I didn't want to know when I was going to go to sleep, I just wanted to sleep and get it over with. After my epidural was in and they were sure it was working, the anesthesiologist put a mask on my face and told me that he had some oxygen and he needed me to take a couple of deep breaths. The next thing I remember, I was in the recovery room. That's it; the deed was done. I'm so glad he didn't say, OK Kari, you are now going to go to sleep. I think I would have said, "You know what? I think I'm healed and I don't need this surgery after all. I'm out of here." Maybe that's why they give you the epidural beforehand. :)

All in all the actual surgery took about 6 1/2 hours. Mayo said that once he got in there, the dysplasia was worse that what was shown on the x-ray but he was able to fix everything. I think I was in the recovery room for another hour or so after that so my poor family had to wait around for almost 8 hours.

The first few days after surgery are pretty much a blur but I do know that I did a lot of sleeping. I think around day 2 or 3, the nursing staff noticed that my epidural wasn't actually numbing the part of my leg it was supposed to. My right, non-surgical leg was completely numb and my left leg was only numb from the knee down. Since it wasn't working right, Mayo decided to remove the epidural a day early and switch me to oral pain medication. Since I couldn't switch immediately from an epidural to oral meds, they put me on a self administering pain pump for awhile. It took awhile to get my pain under control once the epidural was removed but once it was under control, I was golden. My pain was managed with my oral meds very well.

Once my epidural was removed, I was able to start physical therapy. My PT explained that I would be started very slowly. During my first session, I was told the only thing I needed to do was to sit on the edge of the bed. Easy, right? It turned out to be harder than I thought. It started out pretty well but after a half minute or so, I got really, really dizzy so I had to lay back down again.
Through the next couple of days, I learned how to first walk with a walker and then I graduated to crutches. PT really wasn't all the difficult, it was just really tiring. My PT was great. She never made me feel like I wasn't doing well. She was constantly telling me how well I was doing which was a great pick me up.
I also had an occupational therapist come in and show me how to take a shower, put on pants, etc.

I believe I finally got to take a shower for the first time on Friday. (I was receiving bed baths before that.) It was so nice to be clean! My incision was constantly bandaged so Friday was also the day that I got my first peek at my incision. It's approxametly a 6 - 7 inch incision that starts just above my pubic bone and extends upwards towards my waist. The scarring should be minimal because Mayo used internal sutures and then used glue to close the incision. It's kind of unnerving to think that the only thing holding me together is a bit of super glue.

By Saturday, I was ready to go home. I missed my kids and was tired of not being able to sleep without nurses interrupting me. Mayo came in Saturday morning and said that since I was able to start physical therapy a day earlier than most patients, I would be able to go home on Sunday; just 5 days after surgery. The minimum hospital stay is 5 days, so I was very fortunate to be able to go home at that time.

I was finally discharged late Sunday afternoon and got home that evening.

So that's it; my hospital stay in a nutshell. I know there is so much more that Dustin could tell you but like I said, I was kind of in a fog for those 5 days.

On a side note, I just found out that one of my uncle's has hip dysplasia. I've not talked to him but from what I've heard, he is way worse off than I was before my surgery. Perhaps we'll have another PAO survivor in the family in the near future.