my long nightmare may be coming to a middle (update)

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen some of the updates I posted there regarding my hip-replacement surgery, two weeks ago today. I didn't mean to take so long to update everyone here on how that went — sorry! It's been an interesting experience: I’ve felt much better quicker than I imagined (though there's still a long way to go), yet it's also been tiring in some ways, both physically and mentally, which is hardly unexpected. But as I said in my earlier post below, I’ve never had any sort of medical intervention on this level before, so this is all new to me.

The surgery itself went very well. Everyone in the hospital, from the surgeon and the nurses to the porters, was incredibly kind and gentle and amazing. I was super worried about catching Covid, especially since pretty much all mitigations have been removed even in health-care settings in the UK, but nobody pooh-poohed my concerns or tried to downplay them (even though no one else was wearing masks, except during the surgery as usual, of course), and they made sure that I went straight from wearing my FFP2 mask (UK equivalent of N95s in the US) to wearing an oxygen mask in the operating room to having my FFP2 ready to put right back on again when I woke up. (Now two weeks on from my hospital visit, I haven't had any Covid symptoms, so I’m in the clear, it seems.)

Waking up from anesthesia was weird! I had a spinal with sedation, and toward the end I was in and out a little bit — at point I felt some tugging at my hip, which was odd, to say the least. (Maybe that was the sutures going in?) The first thing I said to the anesthesiologist when I first woke up was a mystified "I thought I turned my phone off…" I don't know why I said that! All I can imagine is that I thought what I was seeing — which was just the operating room — was on a screen and not a real thing right in front of my eyes. I guess it's probably nowhere near the oddest thing an anesthesiologist had heard in such a situation.

The next weird thing was a scary thing: I started shivering in the recovery room, like, my entire body shaking harder than I’d ever experienced before. I was worried that that meant that something had gone horribly wrong! The nurse assured me that this was a perfectly normal reaction to anesthesia wearing off, but I wish someone had told me in advance that was something that could happen. It stopped soon enough, anyway.

They had me up and walking just a few hours after the surgery, and I returned home the same day. I was in quite a bit of pain — though also on opioids for it — but it was a different kind of pain than what I’d been living with for the prior six months: all in the muscles that were cut for the procedure, no longer in the hip joint. Every day since then has seen marked improvement in the pain and in my ability and confidence in moving and walking. (The muscles in my hip and thigh have also been weakened from the problems with the hip joint and my general lack of movement, so I need to rebuild my strength from that, too.) I’m now walking in the house with only one crutch, and I’m up to walking half a mile outside, though still with two crutches.

Another surprising thing is how hungry I’ve been: absolutely ravenous, like I’ve never experienced before. Again: totally normal after major surgery, I’ve learned from my Googling — your body needs extra fuel for healing — but not something I was prepared for. I don't think I’ve ever felt such sustained hunger in my life. And I’m not sure food has ever tasted so good!

I’m nowhere near being fully recovered yet, but I seem to be healing very well and pretty rapidly. The worst thing right now is not being able to get good sleep: best for the new hip is to sleep on my back, which I find extremely uncomfortable, because for the first six weeks, while bone grows around the new implant, there's a small risk of the hip getting dislocated. So I’m not supposed to cross my legs at all, including while sleeping, which can happen unconsciously if you sleep on your side (as I like to do). I can't wait till I can sleep normally again.

So: I’m tired and I’m hungry. But I’m starting to feel more like myself than I have in many months. The days seem to zip by even though it feels like I’m not doing much of anything other than doing my little hip exercises and hanging out with my bestie Bonnie (bronxbee in comments here), who flew over from NYC to help me out while I recuperate.

I’m gonna try to do a little bit of work here this week. I won't promise that, however: it's all been a rather overwhelming experience, one that I’m still processing. We’ll see how things go…

previous: 05.22.23

I’m finally having my hip-replacement surgery tomorrow. (I’ve written before about my ongoing trials and tribulations.) I kinda didn't want to mention the date before now, because while I’m not superstitious, I am excellent at catastrophizing, and so many things could have conspired to scuttle tomorrow that it was very easy to imagine me putting the date out into the universe only to have to retract it. Something could have shown up on my pre-op assessments that meant I wasn't fit for surgery. If I had caught Covid again — or any other bug — or even gotten anything so much as an insect bite, that would have meant the operation would have to be delayed. There could have been another big NHS strike that would require rescheduling.

But none of that has happened, and the day is upon me.

I’m nervous, of course. It's a very routine procedure with generally excellent outcomes. But it is major surgery. And the most serious medical intervention I’ve ever had is getting my single solitary wisdom tooth removed more than 30 years ago. I’ve never been a hospital patient and there are a lot of unknowns for me. I’m anxious about catching Covid again in the hospital. And even though I’ve been given plenty of information about what to expect, I really don't know what the next few days and weeks will be like. I don't have a solid idea about how quickly I will bounce back. I’m kinda anticipating that I’m going to be feeling pretty all right pretty soon, but again: catastrophizing is one of my great skills.

Anyway, things are on hold here for probably the rest of this week, but who knows: perhaps I will be feeling well enough and optimistic enough that my brain will kick back into gear in some small way. I don't plan on pushing myself, of course, but I am so eager and ready for the fog that has been enshrouding me to lift so I can finally get back, in earnest, to the work I love.

Stay tuned…