Hospital stay post

I posted the bit about my hospital stay but since I started it a couple of days ago and just finished it today, it's dated Monday's date. You'll have to scroll down past the last couple of posts to read it.

Work has been delayed

Looks like I won't be going back to work on Monday. :(
I have a short-term disability policy through work and will get benefits once I'm off work for 30 days. Since the first day I was off was June 1, I have to wait until after July 1 to go back or I'll lose my benefits. Instead of working on Monday, I think I'll work on Thursday and Friday.
Oh well, what's a couple more days, right?

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

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.

Funked up

All of my prior posts have been pretty cheerful but I have to admit that not everything has been going very well the past couple of days this week. To put it simply, I have been in a funk. Actually, I'm not sure funk is the right word. It's more like I felt like a dark cloud had descended over my house. I'm usually a pretty emotional person but the past couple weeks I have been over-the-top emotional. Apparently, according to Dustin, someone at the hospital said this was a side effect of the medication I'm taking. I have no recollection of this but I guess I'll believe him anyway.


It started on Wednesday, I would start crying for no apparent reason. Dustin would come home from work and I would be sobbing. I have to give Dustin so much credit for dealing with me these past couple of days. When I sobbed that I was sick of sleeping in the living room on a hospital bed, he graciously removed the box spring from our bed in our bedroom so it wasn't so high which made it easier for me to get into. When I sobbed for no reason, he would just tell me it would be OK and let me sob.

I emailed my Dr. office and told them about my current state of mind and they said that it's not from my meds, it's because I'm not getting out of the house enough and I'm not used to having to rely on others all the time. Now that I know this, I packed my weekend full of activity in hopes to keep my blues away. It's now Sunday evening and so far, it's worked. I think it's easier to keep busy during the weekend so I hope I can keep the blues away this coming week.

I have to admit, during my recovery I am craving normalcy. I'm constantly reminded that things are not normal. For one thing, there's a hospital bed in my living room and a shower chair in my bathroom. My bed isn't normal because Dustin took the box spring off and I'm constantly being followed by a pair of crutches. As much as I've loved the meals the people from my church have been bringing over for the past two weeks, I'm glad that we're done with that. Please don't think I'm not appreciative because I am. I'm not sure how we would have managed without them but it's going to be nice to be able to have a choice when it comes to mealtime once again.

So, as I approach the coming week, I ask that you pray that I don't fall back into my funk. I'm not sure my kids and husband can handle another week of uncontrollable crying.

I just remembered I haven't posted anything about my time in the hospital. I'll have to post something within the next couple of days.

The not so itsy bitsy spider

For those of you that know me, you know that I am deathly afraid of spiders. So imagine my fear when I saw a giant spider crawling across the carpet a few nights back. This is not like a fish story where the size of the fish in the story is way bigger than the actual fish. This spider was actually huge and brown.

My mom had recently told me an awful story about a brown recluse spider bite that sent the victim to the hospital so that's all I could think about when I saw that spider. She said they were brown, big and they were super fast. The spider that was walking across my carpet was big and brown but it wasn't super fast. I came to the conclusion that it wasn't a brown recluse but it was still gross and scary.

It was around 11 p.m. and I was about to go to bed but there was no way I was going to be able to sleep with a gigantic crawling around the house. Not just in the house but in the living room where I have taken up residency since my surgery. I couldn't leave him wandering around my house all night and since no one else was awake, I took matters into my own hands.

When I first saw the culprit crawling across the floor, I tried to whap it with one of my crutches a couple of times and missed each time. This gave him the ability to crawl under my coffee table which is right next to my bed. Ewww. I carefully hoisted myself out of bed with my crutches and started looking for my eight-legged nemesis. I looked under the table as good as I could with my limited bending ability and didn't see him. I pulled the coffee table away from the wall and saw nothing. Our heater vent is right next to the coffee table so I was hoping maybe, just maybe I had scared him into the vent. There was a newspaper on the table so I covered the vent in hopes that if the bugger did climb in, he wouldn't be able to climb back out.

Just after I had finished covering the vent, I saw the spider sitting on the trim at the base of our wall. I again tried to smash him with my crutch but again, I failed and he ran towards our exercise bike.

Remember...I had just returned home from the hospital about 3 days prior to this incident. I can't bend, lift or bear weight on my surgical leg and I'm basically one legged. So all in all, this whole thing is a bad idea but I'm on medication and there is no such thing as a bad idea, especially when it comes to spiders.

I can't possible sleep knowing there is a disgusting creature crawling around. Someone told me once that we swallow like, 10 spiders in our sleep per year. It's probably an urban legend or an old wives tale but I've seen this ugly thing I was not about to have this puppy crawl down my throat. I still get creeped out just thing about it.

Anyway, so the spider crawled under the exercise bike and I needed to get it out of there and the only way to find it was to move the bike. The exercise bike is heavy for someone with 2 good hips. Imagine how heavy it is for a person with one good hip and one recently operated hip but, being the strong woman that I am, I was able to move it. I only almost fell about 4 times. :)

Once I was able to move the bike far enough to see the spider, I decided to try to squish him with my crutch but since I didn't have very good luck with that the past couple of tries, I had to come up with a new tactic. The spider was just sitting there, not moving, so I grabbed the nearest movie case, (which just so happened to be one we are borrowing from the church library - oops!) dropped it on the spider and banged my crutch on the case until I thought he was dead. I carefully lifted the case to make sure and saw that he was still alive so I dropped the case back on him. This time not only did I put my crutch back on the case with all of my weight, I put my good leg on the case and bounced up and down a couple of times for good measure.

I picked up the case once again and the bugger was still alive...a little. I wasn't going to take any chances so I managed to bend far enough over to smash the edge of the case on him a couple of times until I knew he was good and dead.

Some of you may feel bad for the poor spider, but I don't. I think spiders are important for insect control but once a spider enters my house, he's on his own. I have no problem smashing, squishing, or sucking them up in the vacuum cleaner although, I prefer that my strong, brave husband take care of them. :) Thanks Hun!

Please remember, just because I killed this spider on my own, I will not make a habit out of it unless my life depends on it. :)

Some good news

Hey, did I tell you I didn't get the femoral osteotomy done? I asked about it during my pre-op and they said that if it needed to be done, they would do it in a second surgery six months from now. Mayo was going to take a look during the hip surgery and see if it needed to be corrected but I didn't hear anything either way. I guess no news is good news, right?

I also found out in my pre-op that my right hip has the same dysplasia but would only have to be fixed if it became symptomatic. I guess we'll wait and see.

One more thing, Mayo said that the dysplasia in my left surgical hip turned out to be worse than what was shown on the x-ray but he was able to correct everything. See? Rock star.
By the way, my sister and my husband met Mayo on surgery day are are not convinced of his rock star status. Apparently, it's only clear to the select few.