My personal story
Coming out of anesthesia in the recovery room after my bilateral anterior hip replacement operation my doctor said it had gone great. I don’t remember seeing him but I do remember the words. I think there is something helpful about hearing the good news right away. In my case, having a surgeon who obviously enjoys the challenge and intensity also helped. He had fun slicing, sawing and grinding – he doesn’t get to do a double all that often. I could imagine his intense professional pride as he chose the optimal positioning for all the parts and placed them with exactitude. I definitely had the right guy with the right attitude.
One thing I arranged for was a private room. I could not bear being next to someone else’s blaring TV. I needed space on my own to go through whatever my process would be. They wheeled me in and I spent the afternoon going in and out of consciousness acutely aware of my wife’s presence. I kept remarking, “two new hips”. I had a few moments of solid awareness such as the one where I surprised the nurses in being able to lift my entire body off the bed using the overhead trapeze so they could change something. This way they didn’t have to roll me on my sutures. Mostly though, I was enjoying the pain free fuzzy aftermath, with nothing to do but be there.
As the sun set I was settling into a relaxed healing reverie so my wife decided to go down to the car for a few minutes to get some things. That turned out to be time for a keystone cops routine. A nurse and orderly come in to check things and the nurse dumps and ice bag on me while the orderly pulls my catheter. I howl as my body fills with tension and pain. I actually never get back to the reverie state, the tension didn’t entirely release and catheter, which I wasn’t even aware of before, was now a source of constant pain. I was only partially successful at dissipating my anger by trying to forgive the klutzes. At the time I thought this interruption in my flow was a huge deal, a day later it was something to joke about.
The hospital was very accommodating. They wheeled a cot into the room for my wife. They were very good about not waking us unnecessarily in the middle of the night, very good about closing the door. The food was just fine, fresh and healthy with a fine range of choices. I felt well supported in my recovery process.
There is no comparison between real, chop you open surgery and those minor procedures where they drill little holes or thread wires through blood vessels. Once you’ve been through a big one you’re part of the club. I suspect all who are in the club have gone through the mini dramas of blood pressure dips, temperature spikes and watching the clock to pass milestones.
As is common, they got me up the first day and had me walk the second. I had no pain standing up, no pain from the sutures, either. Instead I had intense pain from my leg muscles. They were absolutely the limiting factor in motion and the motivational factor for drugs. In practical terms it meant getting shots of morphine for physical therapy. As is my style, I passed on pain killers for general comfort and went through my second night in the hospital without them.
I did all that research on the operation and in the end I was essentially clueless about where I would experience the trauma! I thought getting cut open and having bones sawed off and grinded down meant you’d be dealing with painful sutures and an aching skeleton. Not so, my new skeleton feels like my old one and you can hear a pin drop around my dual 4” Frankenstein gashes. Instead it was swollen muscles, sensitive to the slightest touch and ready to scream bloody murder if I tried to lift a leg off the bed that let me know on a continuous basis that I had just done something major. That leg muscle pain is the only factor limiting my mobility. Amazing.
My particular hip technology, primarily the “anterior approach” allows me to move with no restrictions to the range of motion immediately after the operation. This means it is ok to cross the legs and move the legs however a normal person might. The range of motion I gained even in the first day was startling enough to almost bring tears to my eyes. Imagine if you couldn’t make you big toes touch each other when lying on your back (they actually had to strap my feet together to do proper x-rays since I couldn’t get them there let alone hold them in that position) and, poof you can now flop your feet right over. It is one thing to be told you will regain range of motion and another thing entirely to actually experience it.
The operation actually went better than expected in some respects. For one thing this approach almost always results in some nerve damage that slowly unwinds itself. It was the one downside I was most concerned about even though it was presented as a minor loss of sensation. I was really happy to wake up as one of the outliers with zero sensation loss. The other area was blood, I gave two units of my own and only needed one for the operation so they gave me my pint back after the op which no doubt sped my recovery.
While I was authorized for a five day hospital stay I had no need be there to the max. I was offered the opportunity to leave after two nights but I wasn’t quite ready. I was still feeling strange and was comforted by the proximity of nurses and emergency medical technology. The third day I got a farewell shot of morphine and they wheeled me to the kerb. It was nice to feel the warm outside air. I slipped from the wheelchair to the front seat of the car. Despite the analgesia I could feel every crack on the freeway as we rolled back to the healing hideaway of our quiet home.
