The Trip to the Hip
A story about my experience with total hip replacement surgery.
A story about my experience with total hip replacement surgery.
Part 1 — Pressure Problems
This could really be just a continuation of the day before because in a hospital one never gets a full night of uninterrupted sleep. One day just melds into the next, in hour after hour of repetitive actions. Vitals, blood, check IV, food, repeat every few hours until discharge…….
I was still woozy and nauseous so breakfast stayed on the cart. I was uncomfortable because I was still in a slight sitting up position, and my back was beginning to cramp. How to move? Above my head was a triangular trapeze contraption, so I reached up as far as I could with my right arm, barely managing to wrap the tips of my fingers around the bar. Then I pulled my body slightly up so that my left hand could reach and tried to adjust the angle of my hips a bit so as to get off the spot that had fallen asleep. It was a move I would do many times in the four days I remained in the hospital. Thank goodness for upper body strength. See, all that time in the gym had some purpose.
6AM
I flipped on the TV, mostly to drown out the noise coming from the nursing station right outside my door. Those people were having WAY too much fun, in my opinion. The nurse came in with my medication, pills that I already take at home but must continue taking here. I had brought my own vials as had been suggested, but they provided me with Kaiser copies. How nice of them to allow me to save my own supply (other than the birth control pills. I had to use my own. Hidden meaning? I wonder.) Each pill was in a separate bar coded blister pack. The nurse would scan a bar code on my bracelet and then scan each pill as she popped them into a tiny cup. This was then recorded on one of the computers that is located in every room. Accountability and drug management, and probably a way of insuring the right person got the right medication. I swallowed them all at once with a drink of water, which by the way, was the most horrible tasting water I’ve ever had. (mental note: ask Dad to bring bottled water) So when not swallowing pills, I would drink only the water that melted from the cup of ice chips. For some reason, that tasted normal.
“On a scale of 1 - 10 how is your pain level? One being no pain and ten, unbearable,” queried the nurse.
I stopped a moment to take stock of my pain. “I guess about a five or six”
“OK, I’ll see what we can do.” She left and returned with my friend the “Vitals Machine” and took my blood pressure. It was low, I’m guessing very low. 80/54. “I can’t give you any pain medication until we get your blood pressure up, otherwise you’ll bottom out and we don’t want that to happen.”
Bottom out ? I pictured it like leaping off a cliff and “bottoming out” on the canyon floor hundreds of feet below. Nope definitely did want that to happen. BUT I did want to do something about the pain that was beginning to crawl out of the anesthesia cave and light the surrounding countryside on fire with it’s dragon’s breath. The nurse left to consult about what to do with the blood pressure issue.
She returned with another IV bag of fluid in her hand “The doctor said we can’t give you any pain medication until we get your blood pressure up.” She proceeded to hang the bag on the IV stand and connect the tubing. She adjusted the flow and said, “Well give you some extra fluids and see if that does the trick. An hour and a half.”
“Wait,” I said as she turned to leave,”Can you take this foam thing out from between my legs? I’m really uncomfortable,” She pulled back the blankets and unvelcroed my left leg. Then she moved to the other side of the bed to do the right. She had to lift my leg to get the strap off. I winced, tears coming to my eyes. The slightest movement sideways would send a sharp twinge up my leg into my hip. “Sorry,” she apologized genuinely sympathetic. “Well get you something for the pain as soon as we get that pressure up. All this liquid should help.” She smiled
Funny how you can feel the cold liquid from the IV enter your vein and travel down your arm. I looked at the bag. Drip…….drip……drip……drip. It was ticking away at a faster pace in order to get the fluid in me as quickly a possible. I turned the TV back on and tried to ignore the pain. I kept the room dark because I was still dizzy and I found it more peaceful feeling somehow.
The nurse returned shortly to inform me that the doctor wanted the catheter out. “This wont hurt” she said tugging on the tube up my urethra. She was right, it didn’t hurt at all, just a little disconcerting. “You have to pee within the next 6 hours or we have to put it back in,” she said, almost like an admonishing mother saying “Eat all your vegetables or you’ll have to go to your room!”
Pee? Wait a minute. That entails getting out of bed and walking to the little bathroom, which is about 5 or 6 good steps from the end of my bed. And then there’s the sitting down part to consider… and …. The thought of the pain all that would cause made me ask, “Uh, will I be walking to the bathroom?” my face twisted in an anticipatory wince.
“Well, no. You can use a bed pan.” she suggested matter-of-factly.
Bed pan? Hell NO! I thought to myself. I smiled outwardly and cringed inside my head.
“Physical therapy will be here later this morning to help you get up and start walking.” she mentioned on her way out the door. Oh goody! I thought. That oughta be loads of fun.
11AM – still no pain medication
I could manage the throbbing ache in my right hip if I didn’t move too much, but there was still that problem of sitting in the same position for hours on end and the various body parts going numb or developing an ache of their own. Through the previous night I had learned that if I grab the trapeze and arch my back by simultaneously pushing down with the heel of the left leg and pressing my head against the pillow, I could turn my hips just enough (we’re talking millimeters here) to change the area of pressure. It was an accomplishment of great effort as the protective pad under my bare derrière would stick to me and end up in a bunch on one side. So I learned to stay arched up for just a second or two longer, enough time to let the pad fall from my backside back on the bed.
“Knock, knock!” said a smiling woman in a white coat. “Physical Therapy. Hi, I’m Kelly! Are you ready to move a little?” She was trailed by a male assistant, who I’m assuming was another PT. Obviously he was here to provide the muscular strength to pick patients up who fell down, because this tiny wispy woman would have ended up in traction herself if she tried.
“Sure, I’ll try.” I skeptically answered. The therapist pressed the buttons on the bed that raised the head higher and then she pressed the one that lowered the entire bed so that now I was nearly upright with my legs extended out in front of me. My hip throbbed in this position. The male PT brought over and set up a walker (soon to become my constant companion and best friend). Ok , so now all I had to do was move from parallel to the side of the bed, to perpendicular (you remember your geometry, right?), which meant moving my body 90 degrees to the left. Which meant moving my operated on leg and dropping it over the side of the bed. It all sounded horribly painful. I had no idea HOW painful.
Kelly held my bad leg up slightly as I scooched my butt around. The caution was to make sure that the operated on leg did not cross my midline. I found I had no muscular control to either abduct or adduct my leg. It felt like dead weight. I could bend my knee however. Kelly moved too fast ( I thought these people were trained) moving my right leg off the side of bed faster than my left leg could keep up. Knives of pain shot through my hip and a I yelped, “Ow ow ow ow!” She stopped moving. “Oh sorry.”
When I finally managed to get the left leg to where I could sit on the side of the bed, Kelly slowly lowered my left leg to the ground. I felt the blood drain from my head, and I started to get that cold, clammy feeling that one gets right before they pass out. “Oh hon, are you OK? Look Martin, there’s no color in her face.” she said turning to her assistant. “Can you stand up?”
My head was spinning and I felt my shoulders start to lower. “Uh, no. I don’t think I can stand up, right now.” The nausea was beginning to spread over me. “Here, let’s lie you back down.” I put my hands behind me to lift my butt from the bed so that I could push myself backwards. Lying back down seemed like a slow process, but I felt relieved when my head finally rested back on the pillow.
“That’s OK. I’ll come back in a few hours and we can see how you’re feeling.” she smiled pitifully cocking her head to one side. Yeah, you do that. I thought as I closed my eyes. There was a short discussion between the therapist and my nurse after which the therapist disappeared and the nurse came in with the Vitals machine to take my blood pressure. It was still too low. More IV fluid……….
Still too sick to eat lunch. “No thank-you.”
Hours later, Kelly returned as promised, but sans Martin. I was feeling better. My blood pressure had climbed to about 100/50. “You want to try walking, again?”
I knew I needed to get moving and that the sooner I could get up and walk the sooner I would get better. “Sure, I’ll give it a go.” She opened and locked in place the walker’s legs then proceeded, as before, to sit me up. She was much more mindful of my leg and we managed to get my feet on the floor.
“Are you OK?”
“Yes, I feel pretty good.” I said trying to be optimistic. Then she wrapped a seatbelt kind of strap around my waist so that she could keep me upright more easily. I felt like one of the toddlers on a leash at the mall.
She instructed me to place my operated on leg slightly forward of the good leg, and then with her arm supporting me under my armpit, I stood.
It took a moment to find my feet, and I wobbled a bit. Then realized there wasn’t too much pain involved with this action. The doctor had not placed any restrictions on my leg, so I was free to stroll around with the full weight of my body on the new joint. Nice in theory, but the actual action was a different story. I turned the walker and we headed ever so slowly out the door of the room and into the hallway. I was on the orthopedic floor so it was kind of like entering a freeway with the various other patients meandering the hallways, pushing their IV stands next to them. Some were moving quickly and others, like me, were plodding along step by painful step with their therapists.
As we left the doorway I could feel my blood pressure drop again and that clammy feeling begin to overtake me. I tried hard to ignore it but before we even managed to make it past the nursing station, Kelly looked at me and not liking the bloodless color in my face, had someone grab a chair for me to sit in right there where I stood in the hallway. The other orthopedic motorists swerving around me like I was a car disabled in the fast lane of the 405. I sat for a moment until I felt some color come back to my face. I looked back at where the door to my room was. It seemed miles away.
“Can you walk back, hon?” She asked her eyes analyzing my face.
“Yeah, I think so,” I smiled weakly trying to seem stoic. She helped me stand and grab onto the walker. I took deep breaths and kept putting one foot in front of the other, step by painful step. Finally the bed was in sight. Kelly helped me lower myself down (which hurts more than standing up does) and cautiously helped me swing my legs back in place. My head fell back on my pillow with a sigh that was both relief and disappointment. “We’ll try again tomorrow.” I thanked her for trying and she turned with her folded up walker and left.
