my little miracle in 2022

13:35

Looks like I didn’t do such a good job documenting the process because here I am sitting with my new hip typing up this entry!

Things at work got insanely busy and trying to manage that along with all the pre-op appointments I ended up having left no room for sitting and contemplating. I did just post a back dated entry that apparently I tried to finish 3 times and still never got done. It has a lot of info though so I’ll leave it.

I’m home alone today. Mom flew out this morning to Vegas. This is the first year since 2016 that she started to plan their traditional Mother’s Day trip and all of her friends agreed to go. I’m very happy for them to be able to enjoy this time together. Bummer I couldn’t make it but this was planned before I had my surgery date. Mom was very nervous and unsure about leaving me alone but I assured her I’ll be fine and I really want her to do this, so off she went!

EC is off in beach town getting fitted for a suit for the neighbour’s wedding next month. They’re doing that combined bachelor/bachelorette party next weekend, but I guess today is a whole boys thing too. Whatever. I’m a little annoyed with EC right now, but I always feel weird talking about that stuff. Same with saying those things out loud because it’s like you paint your partner in a bad light and then people start to think of them that way. He does a lot of sweet things too, but those don’t always get written about. I’ll figure it out though. Luckily I’m alone most of the day to process my feelings and get over myself.

Well anyway, I don’t think I’ll sit here and write it all out today, but let’s work on the gist of things:
I ended up having more pre-op appointments than expected because my EKG was abnormal. Looks like my heart showed sings of potentially having had a previous heart attack? Like seriously? I feel like I would notice that. I saw the PA at the cardiologist office and given my history and the only real risk factor being high blood pressure [which is controlled at home, it’s just that damn white coat syndrome I’ve got!] he said he felt confident in giving me the green light and approving me. So yay! Apparently there’s a high percentage of patients that get this false positive type reading.

So I finished out the season and two days later I went to my pre-op appointment with the surgeon’s PA. She did not make a good impression. She wasn’t dumb or anything. Just didn’t really give me any information and answered a question about my meds interacting with “I don’t think so”. Lady. You better be sure I’m not going to have a real heart attack by mixing meds! Ugh. It’s fine though, we live in the internet age and I’ve been able to get a ton of information from there.

I had my surgery on April 26th at the butt crack of dawn. Actually it was still dark out when they wheeled me in the hospital at 5:45am. My mom and EC both wanted to go with me so that was cool. Unfortunately the day was worse for them than me, which is funny considering I had a giant piece of metal hammered into my leg. They didn’t listen to me though and didn’t get any breakfast and/or take snacks and I ended up having a major delay at the hospital before they let me go after 7pm. Poor guys. The good part was that they were both allowed to come into the room with me so at least they didn’t have to trade back and forth or get stuck sitting in the car all day.

The surgery went extremely well. Doc talked to mom afterwards and said that he had no idea how I was possibly still walking around on that hip. He said it looked absolutely terrible. Oops. I have my post-op next week and I’m hoping that they take pictures of it or something. I would love to see it!

The biggest nightmare of the day was when they suddenly decided they wanted to keep me over night and I panicked. I was literally ready to go by about 2pm. I’d already walked about 100ft down the hall with no assistance! And they said all I needed to do was pee and I was out of there. Heck, I’ll go right now! And I did. The nurse was supposed to be coming in to discharge me and instead she told me I had to stay because of some steroids my rheumatologist recommended. I’d had to get an extra blood test done for cortisol levels and they were so low that she wanted me to take the extra stuff. Except she was unwilling to really get involved since that’s not her specialty. Then my surgeon apparently didn’t want to get involved either and ugh it turned into a huge ordeal. There was no way I was going to stay there by myself instead of going home.

They went back and forth with the PA, who I guess got involved even though she had no idea what was going on, and they kept telling me I needed to stay. The original dose was through the IV but everything else was oral medication so what they heck did I need to be in the hospital for??! By the evening the whole place started to smell terrible and just no. They were talking so damn long going back and forth that it was making me crazy. When the nurse came back again to tell me I had to stay I was livid. None of it made sense. I literally told her that I refused to stay and to tell me what I needed to do to sign myself out. There’s way more risk of infection at a hospital than at my home so forget that. Good bye!

She went back out again and decided to take another million years to try to get hold of the PA again and get a prescription for me. Pretty sure mom and EC were hangry by then and so was I [all I’d eaten was a terrible plain turkey burger and even worse chicken soup] and mom went out and told the nurse that we needed to go or we’d miss making it to the pharmacy to pick up the prescription before they closed at 9 and I needed to take it by midnight.

They finally came in and took out the IV and gave me all the paperwork. I could not get out of there fast enough!

On the way home we stopped for burritos, made it to the pharmacy, and tucked me into my couch bed for the night. Everyone kept advising me about staying on top of the pain so I set alarms for every 8 hours to take the prescriptions. I stuck to the Tylenol since I didn’t want to do the harder stuff unless I was dying.

The next day a nurse came to the house to check me out and a couple hours later the therapist came out to start PT. I’ve progressed very well! I stopped taking all pain meds by Thursday [2 days post-op!] and I ditched the walker on Tuesday [a week post-op!]. I’ve got a cane for now and a bunch of exercises to strengthen my legs. Already I’m able to make so many movements that I haven’t been able to do in so dang long. It’s the smallest of things too! Like a couple days ago I touched my ankle for the first time in almost a year! haha.

Well, speaking of improvements, my alarm has gone off to remind me to move and I have exercises to work on since I’ve been lazy today. Gotta stick with it though! I’m hoping to be off the cane by next weekend but we’ll see how it goes!

So I’m off to put this new leg to work!! Thank God!

rose.
14:20