Thursday, April 30, 2009

1 week down

Today marks my official 1 week past surgery. I cannot tell you how thrilled I am to be on the countdown to get rid of all of the machinery as well as the crutches. I tried to complain to my physical therapist today about my inability to sleep more than 3 hours. She smiled and said, "that's good for someone who has just had hip surgery". She gave me absolutely no sympathy. I have tried every thing you can possibly imagine to sleep -- drugs, positions, music, reading boring stuff -- all to no avail. I wake up after 3 hours - wide awake - no matter what. I am constantly tired.

The good news -- the hip pain that I had pre-surgery is completely gone. Vanished. What I have now is the surgical pain -- soft tissue swelling, tight muscles and tendons that have been moved around. That will go away with time. For those who know me well, you know that patience is not something that I really have so of course, I want all of that to be gone today. My therapists laugh. I am pushing myself really hard and so far I am about a day ahead of schedule. In fact, I did new exercises this morning that usually aren't done until sometime during the 2nd week. I realize they could just be telling me all of this to shut me up. :-)

I spend about 11 hours a day doing some sort of rehab for my hip . . continuous passive motion machine, pt, exercises at home, etc. It's become my full time job. I am sorry if you have called and I haven't called you back. I have been coming off the pain meds and it's not been easy. I had a really tough day yesterday. Today is better and I am optimistic that things will improve with each passing day.

Time to go lie on my stomach before I head back to pt this afternoon.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hang in there - each day will get a little better. And then poof...you will have no pain and will remember why you did all of this!

Kate from MN

Kathy said...

Ahhh, the lisght at the end of the tunnel begins to shine! (all be it the tunnel is a long one!)

uncle D said...

one day at a time april.
uncle D