We arrived at the hospital at 10am on a bright, sunny Monday morning. I hopped and skipped all the way to the hospital, knowing that it would be my last chance to do so for quite some time. It was easy enough to find surgery registration, where we signed my life away and took a seat in an enormous, cavernous waiting room filled with waiting families. 10ish minutes later, my time was up.
We were taken back to a semi-private gurney area where I changed my clothes, took a urine sample (surprise! not pregnant), got stuck 3 times before they finally got an IV going (I normally have excellent veins, but today they were not cooperating), answered “What are you here for?” more times than I could count, and gave my husbands’ hand the death grip. I was so nervous and on the brink of tears the whole time. Finally, Clohisy and his resident came by to verify everything and signed my hip and that was that. They stuck some anxiety meds into my IV and I don’t remember anything after that. I wish I remembered giving mangosquash a goodbye kiss.
Before I knew it, I was awake in recovery and feeling okay. The only semi-funny thing I remember exclaiming was “it doesn’t hurt very much!”, and then I remember being annoyed because they kept telling me it would be 2 hours until my husband could visit. Then 1:45 until he could visit. Then 1:30 until he could visit. DUDE BRING ME MY HUSBAND I’M SCARED AND ALONE AND SO COLD. I also remember they made me arch my back so they could shove an x-ray screen behind my hips and I though “you’re letting me do this myself? after you just chopped my hips in half?!”, and then I demanded they make me a copy of the X-ray so I could show everyone. I am glad for high, pushy Lydia because otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten to see the X-ray at all. So proud.
After what felt like forever. my dear husband came back and I was soooooo relieved. He showed me all the text conversations he’d been having with my loved ones (thank you to everyone for your prayers and and care and concern and good vibes and juju and everything! I know it helped get Jon through while he was waiting) and I tried responding, but every single word had a spelling error (full disclosure – so did every single word of the previous two blog posts I posted. It took me a VERY long time to have to backspace and correct every. single. word. I wish I was kidding. Don’t blog high, kids.) so I took some selfies instead.
From recovery, they took me up to my room. I don’t remember much of the transfer but I do remember asking many, many times if I would have my own room (thank you again, high Lydia, for being my advocate). The nurse said “technically it’s a shared room, but we aren’t very busy so 90% chance it’ll be all yours”. And I got lucky, which meant Jon could stay both nights with me. I can’t imagine sharing a room, with all the midnight wake-ups and people coming and going for me AND another person, I never would have slept!
That first night, my pain never got above a 6 or 7, and that was only when I had to move around. When I was stationary, it was a comfortable 3 or 4. I had a pain pump (AMAAAAZING!) and a catheter (ALSO amaaaazing!) so I had a constant flow of relief AND I didn’t have to get up to use the bathroom. Seriously, if you have an option to get a catheter during surgery or any hospital stay, DO IT. It seems awkward and uncomfortable, but it saves you from having to get up at all. I wish I had one now for pure laziness reasons…..
With my nurses help, I was able to get up and take a little journey around my room with a walker. It was a shock to my system, for SURE, plus I was battling super low blood pressure for the duration of my hospital stay, so I ended up getting sick not too long after. I started drinking sugary juice with every med time and drinking lots of water, and I was luckily fine for the rest of my stay.
Sleeping ended up not being as horrible as I anticipated, either, one of my drugs (Vistaril) ended up KNOCKING ME OUT, like falling asleep with my eyes open and jolting myself awake kind of knocking out. My surgeon had requested I sleep in a CPM machine (continuous passive motion) to keep my hip flexing throughout the night. When the CPM delivery man came in to fit me is when I had my one and only hospital breakdown. The machine is the length of a leg, with a leg cradle attached to a motorized base. There was a metal bar that sits parallel to the bed right under the thigh, but because of the angle at which I had my bed positioned at the time, it ended up about 2 inches off the bed and right underneath my butt (RIGHT where I just had some bones rearranged). The CPM man was NOT a medical professional at all, and just kind of grabbed my leg and plopped it in the cradle with no regards to my broken hip, so that was shocking and painful. He started babbling on to me about how it works and I’m sitting there overwhelmed and in pain from his actions and this stupid metal bar under my butt, and he kept saying “oh you’ll get used to it” and finally, through tears, I managed to tell him “NO I WILL NOT THERE IS A BAR UNDER MY BUTT THIS IS NOT OKAY, you need to fix it!”. He still didn’t quite understand and finally my nurse came in and she realized what I meant. We just needed to flatten my bed almost all the way and then it was fine. I am still mad at Mr. CPM machine. I wish I could fill out a customer service survey on my experience with him. Luckily, it ended up being ok, and sleeping was more comfortable with the CPM machine because it kept me from getting stiff, and also kept me from wanting to roll onto my sides, my usual sleeping position.
Tuesday was an overall amazing day. I had a physical therapist come visit me to teach me strengthening exercises and get me up walking. Because of how well my surgery had gone, Clohisy had released me to 50% weight bearing (normal is 20%!) so moving around was a lot easier because I could actually use my bum leg for more than just balance. I quickly decided that my crutches would be my main means of transportation, mostly because our house is too small for a walker, and also they’re just easier to maneuver. My PT was amazed with the ease at which I could move around which made me feel GREAT. Honestly, I had expected everything to be WAY more difficult and MUCH more painful than it was. The only thing that really caused me any excruciating pain was swinging my legs off the bed. I have figured out that I can slide up from the bottom of the bed and crawl my way back to avoid this, though, so that’s great. I also had a visit from the occupational therapist to teach me how to use tools to put on my pants and underwear and socks and shoes. That visit wasn’t very exciting, honestly.
The two days at the hospital flew by. I tried out some different pain meds before finding a combo that would work at home. I found that my brain was extremely fuzzy, making it so hard to focus on anything, including watching a simple TV show, so I sat and colored and went on Facebook and talked to Jon and the nurses. Speaking of nurses, I had three AMAZING nurses and one nurse I didn’t see much of the day of my release. Shout out to Annie, Marie, and Michael! My dear friends Lindsey and Maria came to visit, along with a pastor from our church and Jon’s parents. It was nice to see some outside faces, but MAN did it wipe me out.
Finally, on Wednesday, I got to go home!
my name is lydia 