I’m in the final countdown to my bilateral anterior hip replacement surgery. Monday morning 8 AM I go to sleep and wake up 3 or 4 hours later with two new hips. I must admit I am getting “excited” as the date approaches. I am ready, cheerfully looking forward to it, not thinking of it as an ordeal but an adventure. Go to sleep and wake up with two new hips, what could be easier!
It has been years since I have walked normally, years since I’ve been able to take a hike. My life has been shaped by osteoarthritis. Now I’m looking at reversing what has been the process of ageing and becoming disabled. The prospect is amazing, the feeling delicious. Yea, I have an operation with all the attendant risks and a period of intense and challenging physical therapy in front of me but that pales in comparison to getting my life back.
I feel that bright light of the present inside of me, so lovely to be here, so lovely to be anywhere. I think of the deep sleep of anesthesia, one must be somewhere maybe bathing in the light of the effulgent universe. I imagine the opportunity for deep awareness under anesthesia, the bright light one might experience on morphine.
All is quiet inside my body, there is a profound feeling of acceptance. The broken and diseased parts are ready and willing to go. They did their best, no need to hold on anymore. I accept the scalpel, scraper, the hammer and the bone saw. I am ready to wear my new inner raiment of titanium, ready to be sewn up tight and on my fast path to healing.
Enough of pain and disability. You have been a teacher and a companion, even a friend. I get the ego satisfaction of saying I have been there and done that. I lived my life, learned the lessons and passed the test. Time for a new normal.
I’ve been told I’m in the best hospital around for the procedure. They even have a scratch kitchen, no canned soup even. I donated two pints of my own blood in a three week period to cover the one in five chance I would need a transfusion. I’ve arranged for a private room. I spoke to my anesthesiologist about drugs and options. I even spoke to the woman at the hospital in charge of pillow fluffing. I think I’ve got it all under control.
Not so fast says my subconscious.
Hip replacement dreams
The night after my pre-surgery visit I had the following half dozen dreams:
- I was in a bathroom with urinals but it turned out it was the girl’s bathroom so I was in the wrong one after all with my pants down.
- I am carefully pinning up a friend’s great grandmother’s antique dress and when she sees it she’s horrified I’ve ruined the fabric.
- I break a mirror at my gym while working out.
- At a hotel with my wife, I go outside in my slippers and see four inches of snow and wish we were at home for such a special event.
- I get taken deep into the Himalayan mountains to meet a guru who can teach me how to lie so I will be eligible for health insurance.
- And finally: My cousin (who has had a recent hip operation) is assisting his girlfriend in doing my surgery in a dimly lit spare room that doesn’t even have a door. He is wearing hiking boots and jeans with muddy cuffs. I bleat, “can you at least wash your hands” and wonder how it all came to this.
For a bit of quick interpretation – the first two are classic anxiety dreams, what’s the feeling of finding one’s self in the wrong bathroom or inadvertently wrecking someone else’s precious stuff? Then we move on to specific fears – the physical therapy (the gym), the hospital stay (hotel & slippers), my insurance and, of course, the operation itself.
Nothing like a little dream humor to keep me honest and (hopefully) get things out of my system.
I have to get up at 4AM the morning of the operation to make the hundred mile drive to the hospital. I decided to do the driving since it would be a while until I was next behind the wheel. On the way up in the car I remarked that “everybody” was ready, the bones, the skin. I didn’t have any fear or apprehension, if anything I was approaching the operation with an almost childlike mindset – when I wake up it will be all better. I’d done everything I could to increase the odds of a good outcome and I’d faced all the risks including the very creepy “if we have a big problem on the first hip we’ll stop there and you’ll wake up to only one replacement”. As far as I was concerned it was out of my hands now so no reason to stress out about it.
At the time of my first operation with general anesthesia many years ago we had our 10 year old nephew living with us. They let the family come in for one last word before you go under and my nephew, seeing me lying in the gurney with an IV in my arm, couldn’t resist the opportunity for a joke. He took the sheet, popped it over my head and said, “didn’t make it”. Watching helplessly as the lights went out I shuddered rather than chuckled. This time I’d made plenty of “if I don’t wake up dead” jokes and had thoroughly processed with the downside possibilities so, again, I was very relaxed going in.
I’d been offered the option of a spinal rather than general. I had no desire to be there, no need to review the video afterwards either. I didn’t even want to be awake for them shaving me.
All prepped and ready to go the anesthesiologist does his thing and the lights go out.
