Sunday, April 26, 2009

Thank goodness for drugs!!

Wow . . so many things have happened since I last posted (the morning before surgery.

Let's start with surgery -- arrived at the hospital at 7:30 and they took me immediately to pre-op prep. No idle waiting time at all. I had a great nurse, Rusty, who did all my vitals and then put my IV in. My anesthesiologist came in around 8:30 - Dr. Billig and did a spinal nerve block for my hip. Also injected something into my iv to help me relax. . . amen!! They wheeled me off to the operating room around 9:00 am and I remember that they were strapping me down and that's it . .light's out. The next thing I remember, I was waking up in recovery and they were trying to get pain and nausea under control. As soon as we accomplished that, I was carted directly to my room. The nerve block was still working to the pain was manageable with some diladid injected into my iv every few hours. Great nursing staff at Vail Valley Medical center!! I was up on an excercise bike within an hour of arriving in my room and was on it for 20 minutes even though I couldn't walk on crutches yet due to no feeling in my hip. One of the purposes of the excercise bike is to get excess fluid out of the hip joint. I won't go into the gory details but let's just say it worked effectively. In fact, it took 2 bandage changes that night.

Friday morning, an occupational therapist came and helped me get dressed and showed me a few things about walking on crutches and let me brush my teeth!! Soon after, I was put in a wheelchair and taken downstairs to physical therapy where I met Meghan and Lindsey (who I have spent a lot of time with this weekend). Meghan went over post-op instructions with me but it was about this time that the real pain begain to kick in. I started taking some serious drugs but it wasn't helping much. Finally got the pain under control and then Lindsey came in to move my hip around in the socket. Wow!!! This is totally different than my last surgery where I didn't move my hip at all for a long time. Therapy made me feel a little better and we came back to house where I did the continuous passive motion machine and the game ready ice machine for the entire time before I went back for more physical therapy. Friday was kind of a bad day. Lots of pain that was only somewhat relieved by medicine and it was very hard to sleep.

Saturday, all of Dr. Philippon's patients were to be in at 9:00 to meet with him for a post surgical check. I found out why the pain is so much worse for me this time --he had to shave down more of the bone than he expected or did last time. And, in some very rare cases, the 100 lbs of traction that they put on your ankle to pull your hip out of socket causes an issue with the ankle. That would be me. I will spare you the gory details but my ankle pain is significant too. I then did PT with Lindsey, got a bite of lunch and did more physical therapy with Lindsey. We arrived there yesterday morning at 9 and left at 5:30.

oops -- i just looked at the time and have to get ready for more physical therapy this morning so will write more later.

1 comment:

uncle D said...

i was beginning to get worried but feel better now that i have heard from you.
thought and prayers.
uncle D