Sunday Morning Post (V.1, #37) – Recovery at Home

Good morning all.  I hope this entry finds everyone well.  I am home from rehab, recovering from my recent hip surgery.

My right hip arthroplasty on October 2 went well.  The surgeon replaced my original hip with a different joint then the one he put in my left hip last year.  This new joint will — it is hoped — give me more stability.  I knew my gait was, to put it charitably, “out-of-whack”, owing to several birth defects involving my ankles and hips.  That should all be corrected now as I re-educate my body to walk like a normal human being.

Unfortunately, another type of joint also meant I had to endure more pain than what I remembered from last year’s surgery.  There was also a new complication this year: a urinary tract infection resulting from the placement of a catheter while in the hospital.  I had had experiences with a catheter before.  It was annoying, but otherwise not too painful.

My usual routine at home is to rise every hour during the overnight to urinate.  I could not imagine calling the hospital nurse every hour just to position the urinal so I could pee.  I requested — yes, I requested - that they insert the catheter so I could be less of a nuisance to them.  After this year’s experience, I will swear off catheters for life and if I am a nuisance, then so be it.  I do not want to gross out my readership, but suffice to say that the catheter placement was more painful than my previous experience and caused my infection. And oh yes, for a full week my urine was merlot wine red and not the customary yellow. 

I am still on antibiotics for the UTI, but my urine color is back to normal. If there is a silver lining to all this, it’s that the infection took my mind off any post-surgery pain I had. 

My original hope was to go directly home after my hospitalization.  The physical therapist at the hospital talked me into going to a rehab facility prior to going home. In retrospect, this was a good decision, as my stay at another facility gave Warrior Queen a break from caring for me at home.  I chose a facility which is close to my home, accepted my insurance, and I was familiar with since my uncle had been a patient there during the last years of his life.  

Unfortunately, the insurance took four days to authorize my stay so I ended up going home for a few days anyway.  I stayed at the rehab facility seven days and came home on my 60th birthday.  It really was a great birthday gift just to come home.

Otherwise, my recovery has not been bad.  I can only think of one slight indignity through all this and that has to do with one meal I was served at one of the facilities.  The hospital meals were good; the rehab facility meals were tolerable.  Once I was served a hamburger and French Fries.  Usually I would require several servings of ketchup for both.  This time I received one packet of ketchup to split between the meat and starch.  And, oh yes, the ketchup was not Heinz!

As another blogger buddy would put it, “Oh, the pain!”

(Thank you for reading.  And how was your October?)