Two week follow up at Iowa City

Yesterday Logan and I went to IA City for my 2 week follow-up. It is funny how time can seem to go so slow. Two weeks is really nothing, but it feels like a lifetime right now. It is hard to believe that I went through with the surgery and that the worst is behind me.
The drive was a little uncomfortable, I'm not used to sitting in the car for that long. Once we got there we bypassed the valet parking (dumb!) and went to the parking ramp like we always do. We found a spot fairly close to the elevator so I crutched from the car to the elevator. I thought we would be able to find a wheelchair at the sky walk entrance, there usually was every other time we had came to IA City. Murphy's law was in effect and there were no wheelchairs, so I crutched from the parking ramp to the exam room. Needless to say that was a little uncomfortable as well, but on the other hand I did it and I survived so that was a small victory. One of the doctors from Dr. Mickinley's group cam in and I told her about the weird groin pain and swelling in my groin, and the tenderness of my old C-section scar. She didn't seem too concerned and said it was probably from the way they had to open me up to do the surgery. (Pulling of the skin back and stuff) She then had me lay on the table and moved my hip around, flexing it in and outward. OUCH! Then she looked at my scar and said it looked great. A few minutes later Dr. Mckinley came in, he agreed that the groin pain was normal and it would go away as I healed. He also showed me my new x-rays with my lovely hardware. My hip looks almost normal now, minus the three long screws in my hip. My angle went from 0 to 27 degrees. (normal is 25-30) He seemed happy with my progress so far, he also moved my hip around but just up and down, no twisting, he knew that would be too painful. My next appointment is in 5 weeks and hopefully the x-ray will show that I can start to get off the crutches. I hope these next weeks go by faster than the last 2!
After the appointment we stopped at Williamsberg and did a little shopping before we went home. When we got home we made a trip to Sam's club before picking Caleb up from daycare. I took pain meds about every 6 hours today, which is more than I have taken the last few days, but I overdid it yesterday and by the time we got home, I didn't want to move from my chair. I am glad we got so much done, but I wish my healing would go faster!

1 week post PAO

Well I finally got caught up with my blog. It is 1 week since my surgery. My butt hurts. I am tired of sitting, but find it to difficult to get in other positions. I have been able to make it out into the real world once every day. Monday it was to get my blood drawn, since the hospital social worker dropped the ball on that one. Tues I went to Scheels for different sandals & my Hy-Vee. Wed I went to Target & Bed Bath & Beyond (needed a good vanity mirror for applying make-up. I get tired standing on one leg all the time!) Today the visiting nurse came to my house to draw blood for my INR. After that Logan took me to the Home Depot so he can order wood to build a retaining wall this weekend.
I am able to get around pretty well with the help of my walker and crutches. My walker helps me while I am in the house while the crutches help me get down stairs and out in public. I tried to ween myself off the pain meds yesterday, again it didn't go so well. I talked with Tess and she said it is still early, so I shouldn't worry about that for now.
I can move my leg forward while walking with crutches, but can't move it from side to side very well. Sometimes I can lift it up to an ottoman, sometimes I can't. I think I have the downward motion figured out, that doesn't hurt as bad. I have had a bit of swelling in the left leg from my knee upward. It gets worse at night and feels very weird. The whole hip joint is just plain SORE and it feels very tight. I am told this is normal, so I will try not to envision bad scenarios with the joint.
Showering is not too bad. I am so glad I have the transfer bench for the shower, I don't know what I would have done without it!
Several times in the hospital I would wake up in a stupor and have to remind myself of what I did, and am so glad now that the past is behind me and I can look forward to a better future with a non-dysplatic hip. Now if rightly can hold out, only time will tell.

Alice in Wonderland

The number one reason I didn't like my hospital stay was my roommate, "Alice". She was crazy, literally. She was on the floor because she had shoulder surgery on her right arm. It was in a metal brace that forced her to keep her arm extended straight outward. They had wanted to discharge her on the day of my surgery, but when they asked her where she was she said she was at St. Luke's in Cedar Rapids and it was 2002. She also lived alone in an apartment with 2 flights of stairs. She clearly was not ready to go home to take care of herself. Often I would make sure the curtains were closed between us because I didn't want to talk to her. This didn't stop her from talking. Sometimes she talked in her sleep, sometimes to me, and sometimes to the TV. Ahh, the TV, she never turned it off. Never. It was so loud and was the main reason why I didn't sleep. If I have to stay in a hospital again and may have a roommate, I will pack a night mask. I tried to use my IPOD to drown out the sound, but the charge ran out in the middle of the night.
Every other word out of Alice's mouth was a swear word and I never knew what she was doing. On Friday night, she had a bed alarm placed on her bed, so she got up several times and set off the alarm in the middle of the night. No sleeping in my room! I was a little nervous that she might hurt me. I couldn't move literally, she could and who knew if she would start to think some crazy thought and hurt me somehow. I kept thinking about the movie "Misery" when Kathy Bates crushes the leg of her captive. Luckily this never happened. She had so many good sayings that Sat night Logan and I had to jot them down, so as not to forget it. Here they are...
Scene: Hospital room with two beds curtains drawn for privacy.
Night 2: Alice had gotten out of bed and is looking around holding a blanket around her waist.
Nurse: "Where are you going?
Alice: To go look for a job.
Later... "No we are not all from Dubuque."
(Thankfully a nurse came in and got her to turn off her light at least when it was 11pm)
Night 3:
Alice randomly says: "So would you guys consider finding this?" "No, go and tell him he has to get out of there!" "Sounds like its...Ooh! I sorry!"
Alice talking to TV: "I think you should sleep on it!"
My personal favorite, "I didn't know I was a diabetic?!" Every time the nurse's aid would come to check her glucose before meals. Did I mention she had a huge baggie full of tootsie rolls and other chocolates?
The staff tried changing her pain meds, ruled out an UTI, gave her oxygen, everything they could think of to make her lucid, but I think she was just crazy, plain and simple. I wish Alice the best, she clearly can not take care of herself and it seems that she has no real help at home. I only wish she would have turned the tv off.

Discharge on Sunday!

What a happy day! It started early, I never slept the night before, maybe a few hours. The Doctor's came about 6:30 in the morning, Logan missed them again. That made him angry, he could never time it right, except for Friday. They came and took the dressing off my scar, said it looked good and asked if I wanted to go home. I said yes, so he said he would write the discharge orders. Logan came a little later and I told him what the doc had said. I ordered breakfast and then we started to get me cleaned up to go home. During this the nurse came in and said she ran into a snag and could not find the discharge orders. After I was dressed we got me in a wheelchair and went out to the nurses station. She gave Logan my prescriptions so we could take them down to the pharmacy and get them filled while we waited. When we came back up the Nurse had my orders ready. The problem had been some sort of lack of communication between staff regarding a blood draw that I had earlier in the day. I am on warfarin, a medication that prevents clots. I will have to have my blood drawn twice a week because of this. Well apparently someone didn't know my INR (blood test used to determine dose of warfarin) had been taken previously and so no one knew what my dosage of warfarin was to be. But now this snag had been taken care of I was given the green light to go home. I asked the nurse about caring for my scar, she said I would have to check with Tess on Monday. I couldn't believe that the doctors hadn't told me in the morning if the nursing staff wouldn't be able to tell me. This made me angry, which pretty much sums up how I felt about staying at the Hospital. I never really felt like I was ever told that much information, thank goodness I am a pharmacist and have a little bit of a medical background. I feel sorry for patients that do not.
A nurse helped Logan and I out to the car with all of my stuff and my walker and crutches. I preferred using the walker over the crutches, but the walker was not mine to keep. Logan stopped at a gas station to get some pretzels and some drinks and we were off. The car ride was not very fun. I wished we had packed pillows for the ride home, we didn't so we never stopped for lunch we just drove home as fast as we could. My pain meds were also wearing off during the drive, so the timing wasn't very good either. Finally we were home and reunited with our son Caleb. It was so good to see him! I had missed him a lot! We had talked on the phone the whole time, but 2 year olds are not so good at talking on the phone. After we got lunch and settled in I was able to shower for the first time since the Wednesday before. It felt really good, I felt human again. Then I took a nap in our bed. I love our bed it is so comfortable, I really missed it!

Hospital Stay - Saturday

Saturday came and the night before was long, I didn't sleep much due to my roommate. Logan came about 5:30 in the morning and this day the doctors did not round until closer to 7am, so he was frustrated. I didn't blame him. The doctors didn't say much, just changed my dressing and said that I would have more X-rays done today. My appetite continued to get better. My medication regimen included Oxycontin 20mg twice daily, Percocet 2 tabs every 4 hours, Vistaril 50mg every 4 hours, Iron three times daily, Stool Softener three times daily, Senokot twice daily. Saturday morning my parents stopped by to say good bye, they had to make it back to EG for a graduation. Logan and I hung out and I ordered my lunch, we heard a rumor that Physical therapy was going to come for me but the nurses told me to order anyways. Unfortunately right after I did this, they came for me from X-ray. I was wheeled to the dept and was set up in the waiting room. After about 10 minutes, the tech came out and said they didn't realize I needed a special kind of x-ray and the only person available to do it had just gone to the OR. They told me to continue to wait and sent Logan to my room to wait for PT since they were coming any minute. After about 5 minutes Logan came back because my lunch had arrived. So the x-ray tech said I could go back to my room and they would get me later. So I went back to my room had lunch and then went back to x-ray. The x-rays required me to stand on one leg without my walker, it was tough but I was able to do it. I can't wait to see what the pictures look like! After X-Ray I went back to my room and PT was finally ready for me. I got set up with my crutches. I didn't like them at all, I got around pretty good with the walker, but since my home has a lot of steps, I had to use the crutches. It was pretty shaky, and the PT therapist was kind of strange. I didn't like his analogies. When I started with the crutches I kept my left foot up the same way I did with the walker, the therapist said I was doing it wrong and I should try to imagine stepping on a glass, putting enough pressure to touch the ground but not break it. Now, I'm not Jewish and have never stepped on a glass. I would try to ask, if my knee is bent, isn't that a good sign I am not putting too much weight on the left? He would say, what they taught in PT school was to step on a glass and didn't really answer my question. The PT therapist took me into their room where they keep their staircase. I made my way up and down twice. The PT therapist looked pleased, but I wasn't so sure. He said, "you know, now that you passed the steps you can go home." This sounded ok to me, but it was so soon, I didn't know if I was ready. Logan was really excited, he was ready to go home. The nurses had even hinted at the fact that I may go home on sat. I wish I had, sat night was the worst yet. (Due to my roommate and low staffing levels) The way it turned out was that the Dr. was not ready to release me yet and wanted to look at my scar in the morning. So I stayed. I had also tried to take less of my pain medication that day and if finally caught up with me that evening. I hurt really bad and started feeling super hot. The nurses aide came in and took my temp, she held it out for me to see the reading, but it was in Celsius, and I haven't converted Celsius to Fahrenheit since chemistry at Drake. I asked her what it meant, she said she didn't know, then said she thought it was 104. This shocked and scared me, I have had a high temp like that before and it wasn't fun. Luckily we had our laptop in the hospital and Logan googled the conversion and my temp was 100.4. Much better. The nurse's aid had said the nurse would be in to see me in 15 minutes. 1 hour later he came, by this time the pain meds I had taken had eased my pain and i was starting to cool off thanks to my fan. It was getting to be about 9pm, so Logan headed back to the hotel. I really didn't want to see him go, but I knew he wouldn't be comfortable at the hospital. The only good thing was that I would go home the next day.

Hospital Stay - Friday

My hospital stay was 4 days long, including the day of surgery. It was quite an interesting thing. I wish I could say I slept well, but who can in a hospital? On Friday morning (day after surgery) he doctors came about 5:15 for rounds, Logan had wanted to be there, but just missed them. They didn't say too much, except that I would have a CT scan today. Later that morning my nerve block (epidural) and catheter was removed. My PCA pump was also removed. I wondered how my pain level would be without the nerve block and the PCA pump, but it has always been well controlled with the oral pain medications. Friday morning around 10:30, Dr. Mckinley and his nurse Tess stopped by to check on me. Dr. Mckinley said the surgery went very well and the hip was in a perfect position. Around 11:30 on Friday the physical therapy people came by to get me out of bed and show me how to use the crutches. Unfortunately the nerve block was still causing some numbness so I wasn't really able to put all of my weight on the right leg. Everyone was worried, myself included. If I couldn't put weight on my right, what would I do? Righty had surgery when I was 20 months and I have always tried to be gentle with it. Luckily by Friday afternoon the block had worn off and I could make it to the bathroom really well with the help of my walker. All of the nursing staff was impressed. That made me feel pretty good. I was still battling nausea and I was so HOT! I could not get cooled off, so Logan went to Wal-Mart and got me a small clip on Fan, while my mom wheeled me around the hospital to cool me off. My room was very small and I had to share it with a roommate. I am going to post another entry just about my roommate, stay tuned. After I got the fan set up I was really quite comfortable in my hospital bed. After lunch I got rolled to X-ray for the CT scan, which was pretty uneventful. My appetite improved, but I was still very drowsy. My sister cam by with her kids and Angel that evening. It was really good to see them, but it was late in the day and I was having trouble staying awake. Everyone left about 10:30 and I tried to get some rest.

Day of Surgery

(It has been 5 days since my LPAO, but I am going to breakdown how everything went. I didn't feel like blogging until today so I apologize for the long delay.)
The morning started at 5am, I had to report to the surgery center at 6am for 8am surgery. First my phone rang, then the room phone rang with our "wake-up" call , and then the alarm on Logan's phone went off, so needless to say we had no chance to oversleep. After another shower with the lovely Betadine solution (this is a special soap that helps prevent skin infections), I was dressed in comfy clothes minus any make-up or hair products. We met my parents downstairs, the hotel was busy, lots of other patients going to surgery as well. I think I was the youngest. We hoped in the car and made our way to the hospital, I was amazingly calm considering what was about to happen to me. We parked the car and then made our way to admissions. I checked in and about 2 seconds later was whisked back to a room by a "no-nonsense" nurse. I think she had been doing the job for awhile. She got my vitals and gave me my hospital bracelet. Then she handed me my gowns and a bag for my own clothes. After I was dressed the another nurse from the anesthesiologist dept. came. He started to talk to me about the epidural and my anesthesia plan, when two nurses came in begged him to let them have the room I was in. The nurse was hesitant, he asked me if I cared if we moved to a TV Lounge that had very few people in it. I being the agreeable person I am said that would be all right and we moved to the lounge with Logan and my parents. Once in the Lounge he went over the risks of anesthesia and told me how the rest of the day would go. I signed some paperwork and then he started my IV, of course this is when other people walked into the lounge. Good thing I don't embarrass easy. I was able to wait with my family for about 10 more minutes and then I had to kiss them goodbye and get on a gurney to go back to surgery. It was an odd feeling being wheeled back when I am used to being very independent. Our first stop was the anesthesia suite, where I was given my epidural which would provide a nerve block and help with pain. Unfortunately I was a test patient for the doctor that did the epidural, he had to poke me three different times and apparently got some spinal fluid, which put me at risk for a spinal headache. That did not make me happy. (My previous experience with an epidural was when I had Caleb and I only had to be poked once.)

(My three pokes and bruise from epidural.)

After that fun time I was wheeled back to surgery where all I remember was the plastic mask and then I went to sleep.
When I woke up I was back in recovery and did not remember having the tube pulled out or anything else. Maybe it was the anesthesia, but I do not remember anyone telling me anything about the surgery. I do remember the new nurse being upset about the new computer system implemented at Iowa and complaining about it a lot. But finally I was wheeled into my new hospital room and after 30 minutes of waiting in my room I was finally reunited with my family. They were a little upset because they did not know I was in my room, they just wandered and found me. It was then that I learned that the surgery had gone well and I had lost very little blood. The rest of the day I dosed on and off. The nurse for my room came in and tried to get me to eat something for dinner but I felt too nauseous. I did order some soup, but was unable to eat it. The rest of the day I got used to my surroundings. I will start a new post about my hospital stay since I feel like this one has gotten too long.

Count down..

It is Tues night, my wonderful husband is doing the dishes in the kitchen while I check email and unwind from another busy night at the pharmacy. I can't deny the truth anymore. I will be having surgery on Thursday, and I really do have pain, as much as I try to ignore or deny it. Part of me is excited to think that possibly I could feel like my left leg won't go out on me, or that I won't get sharp twinges of pain when I turn wrong, or that it won't lock up on me anymore. Maybe that funny pain in my but will go away too! All is possible. After all, not being able to walk is only temporary. I deal with much more sick patients on a daily basis, who am I to complain? My plans for tomorrow: Finish packing for Caleb and me, Clean the bathroom, go to the bank (i forgot to reorder more checks, argh!), and spend as much time with Caleb and Logan before we have to go to IA City.
Wish me (and the surgeons!) luck! Then next time I blog this will all be over and I will be on the road to recovery.