WOW!! I can not believe it has been over two months since I posted...sorry to anyone who may be following along. Let's plat a little game of catch up, shall we.
October 2008
As mentioned in the last post, I came home from the second surgery with a PICC line in my right arm. Unfortunately within one week I was back in the hospital, this time with a blood clot right at the PICC line. What a horrible experience!!! I went to Hershey ER. I laid in an ER bed for 20 hours until a nurse on the the day shift finally helped me. Before that everyone was giving me the run around and would not call my ortho team because this was not an "ortho case". I was in terrible pain, both in my hip and my arm. It was not until the next day that the nurse (new to my case) looked and saw how long I had been there started to let heads roll. My ortho team got word that I was in the ER and found out what was going on; they then proceeded to tell the ER docs to basically kiss off. I was admitted for two days and had a new PICC line put into my left arm. I left the hospital with a new complication...a blood clot. I had to give myself Lovenox injections into the stomach once more (I had to do this right after the 1st surgery) and eventually was put on Coumidin to thin the blood and dissolve the clot.
After all of that the rest of October was pretty uneventful. I was happy that I was able to sit out on the front porch with my mom and hand out candy to the trick or treaters. That has been a tradition since D & I got married 8 years ago. As far as the hip...no weight bearing yet, but boy is my upper body strength starting to get really good.
November 2008
Ah, November...the start of the true healing. On November 6th I went back to see Dr. Goodspeed and received much better news than last time. I was able to put 50% weight bearing on my right hip. Wow, you don't even know how good those words sounded!! It was like he had given me the greatest gift. Not only that but he wanted me to start physical therapy (PT). I had really been looking forward to PT as before the surgery I was a bit of a gym rat or activity hound. Sitting around for almost two months was not my bag.
On November 12th I started PT. Oh my, how weak I had become!! I could hardly do the exercises Paul had given me to do. I had some pain but it was mostly just discomfort. The pain came when something new was introduced.
December 2008
On December 9th I was allowed to become full weight bearing!!! Woohoo!!!! I knew that technically I couldn't, but I felt as though I could run a marathon that day. I believe that was the day that I really started to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Up until this point I was having doubts that I would be able to make a full recovery - there had been sooo many unforeseen complications along the way.
PT with full weight bearing brought many new exercises, and with those new exercises brought new movement with new pains. But now the pain seems all worth it. No pain, no gain, right?
On December 18th I had another appointment with Dr Goodspeed. This appointment went very well. My mom and I got to see the before and after of my hip surgery. Wow, what a difference!! I have been having a lot of pain in my left hip (the one not operated on) during therapy. I asked Goodspeed if I should buy by plane tickets for a trip to Ireland in October '09 or schedule my surgery for the left hip. He said that I will be ok to buy the plane tickets! Ireland her I come.
On December 29th I returned to work. I thought I could do full days, but I was sadly mistaken. I will only be working until 3pm until I can get my stamina back up. Not to mention my driving skills back; I am still having trouble moving my leg around to put it on and take it off of the gas and break, which make rush hour a bitch.
I am slowly getting back to the real world, and it feels great.
