My hip is revised and I am home. Who would have believed that it was possible to accomplish so much in 36 hours.  Ok, so now to the highlights.  They gave me a drug that is supposed to make you have amnesia..it didn’t. I remembered everything about the spinal block including them telling me that people with arthritis are “difficult” to do this procedure on…I would never have guessed.

After surgery, they put me in a room with an 80 year old woman whose daughter (luckily) was staying the night.  I couldn’t sleep from some of the medicines they gave me that make you more jittery than anything.  Apparently they also made, we’ll call her grandma, confused.  Really confused.  At about 2:30AM, she walked around the side of her bed, past her sleeping daughter, opened the curtain,  looked at me and called her daughter’s name. She had the same surgery as I had so she did have an IV before her little walk, but did not have it by the time I had my finger on the nurses’ button and was calling to her daughter to wake up.  She didn’t have a walker so she could and really should have fallen in all of the blood that was flowing freely out of her wrist, but luckily, did not.  The nurses were calm but couldn’t get a new IV started because her veins kept “rolling.”  I’m not sure what that means, other than we all lost 2 1/2 hours of sleep from grandma’s little jaunt.

Then around 5, an alarm kept going off on a machine I was attached to that monitored my heart beats per minute and oxygen levels.  The sound this thing made would wake the dead.  It was consistent though, I’ll give it that.  It went off every five minutes until we were awakened at 6 to get our stats, changing our bandages, and I can’t remember what else, before the surgeon got there.  The nurse was a little scared abut my heart beats per minute that averaged between 42-46 every time it beeped.  The surgeon really didn’t know if that was a big deal or not so he referred me to the hospitalist who would be in shortly.  The hospitalist didn’t care at all, and just told them to turn it off that the slow heart rate was due to the narcotics they had been using.

Ok, great, I was ready to go home.  Three hours later and four discussions about what I can and can’t do when I got home and I was out of there.  Here’s what I can do.  Lay around with a device that stops blood clots.  Get up  for 10 minutes and walk maybe 30 feet, then lay back down always elevating the hip.  Can’t ride in a car for three weeks and that’s only to the doctor’s office.  Can sit in a chair but only to eat three meals.  I’m planning ways to eat while lying down and doing crafting while sitting up, otherwise I clearly might go insane.  I’m thrilled it’s over with and will be glad when my hip doesn’t stop me from doing things I want to do.  Everything really did go well and I’m happy to be home.

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