Post Surgery: One Week

It is actually sort of hard for me to believe it has only been a week post-surgery. Although I have been feeling good, generally speaking, the last week seemed reeeaaaaallly long. The weekend in particular seemed to be very, very long after the depressive funk that set in on Friday.

Anyway, today was uneventful and unproductive considering how unmotivated I am to do work. Both kids went to daycare/summer camp and my husband was working, so I was alone for most of the day, which never does much for one's morale. I ended up reading a blog by a woman just a few years younger than I am, who tore her labrum about five years ago and has basically been living Hell on Earth ever since. It concludes with her getting a total hip replacement and then photo-blogging her year-long recovery on Flickr. There's a semi-happy ending in that she got engaged during the ordeal and now has a baby, but still. Phew. It made me feel very lucky. On the other hand, her story started off something like mine - active woman in her 30s undergoes what she believes to be routine hip arthroscopy to fix a torn labrum, expecting to be fully recovered in 3-6 months. And then... it doesn't turn out that way. So perhaps I should not be congratulating myself just yet. LOL. By the time I finished reading her blog, I was happy to have to go to PT just to get out of the house. Don't get me wrong, her attitude was actually very inspirational, otherwise I'm sure I couldn't have read through her five years of trauma, it's just freaky to think that one moment you can be working out in a gym and the next you are starting down the road to permanent disability/pain. I pray that is not my fate. But if it is, then it is.

FYI: http://meandmyhipster-sj.blogspot.com/

Physical therapy was okay, although I liked the therapist even less than the one I had on Friday. Either this place I'm going to now hires really awful PTs or I've just gotten insanely lucky with the PTs I've had in the past. At any rate, the session pretty much kicked my ass. The PT kept telling me that if something hurt I shouldn't do it. The thing is that it didn't hurt exactly, it just made me feel weird and/or hurt other parts of my body that were not my operated upon hip. Not to mention, it just fatigued me in general. I don't know if that's okay or not? And I feel like that's sort of the PT's job - to tell me what's okay and what's not.

For example, I did a bunch of standing up exercises. I could only do these on one side because I can't put full weight on my right side. It ended up with my left hip and knee really hurting (My left knee has a history of Bad Behavior, which I know makes me sound like a complete wreck, but I can assure you that most people who know me would describe me as pretty active and healthy person.). My left side, especially my hip, already hurt quite a bit, hopefully just because I have been favoring my left side for so long, but... who knows? I know I have very shallow hip sockets, which led an orthopedist in the past to tell me I'd need a total hip replacement in both hips by the time I was 30 (see: The History of my Hips), so there's not necessarily any reason to think I won't have the same problems on my left side as on my right - though I certainly hope that isn't the case! Whatever the case may be, I don't want to over-stress my left side because I'd hate to think that rehabbing my right hip would lead to me needing surgery on my left hip. But at the same time, if the pain is normal, then I can deal with it. Also, I mentioned that I had major back pain after the surgery. This isn't new; I've had major back pain for a long time, and in fact it is back pain that finally drove me out of diving for good. Since the surgery, some of the worst pain has been in my back. Some of the exercises I did today really hurt my back, and either the PT didn't want to deal with this or didn't know how. He sort of chalked it up to, 'Well once your hip is healed your back pain will go away.' So... okay? Does this mean I should push through the back pain or not? I think this is why I enjoyed reading the blog I mentioned earlier; this woman has severe pain in her back and shoulder and arm, which she KNOWS is related to her hip pain, yet no one will deal with this. I feel the frustration. I mean, I get that people are now highly specialized to just deal with one body part, but I also know that everything is connected, and if neither orthopedists nor PTs are willing to address this, then who?

On a different note, I knew that I was limited to '50% weight bearing' for four weeks, which is why I have to be on crutches so stinking long. However, I guess I never really thought about what '50%' meant before. In my mind, I had sort of concluded that it meant '50% of normal.' However, as the therapist explained today, if I am standing with equal weight on both legs, that's '50%,' which, duh, is logical, that's just not the way I thought of it. (I felt better after telling both my mom and husband about this, and neither one of them interpreted '50%' in this way, either. Seriously, patient education is really lacking in a lot of cases. I know I'm not a genius, but I think I have at least average intelligence, which means that if I can't figure something out, about half of the rest of the people in my situation can't either.)

Considering it has hurt really bad to put weight on my right hip for I don't even know how long, I think it has probably been almost a year since I've stood with equal weight on both legs. I was forced to do so for the first time in foooorreeeever today, and it actually felt okay. Now I am making a conscious effort to stand with equal weight on both legs.

Anyway, I feel like overall I feel so good and so optimistic, yet physical therapy makes me come home feeling depressed, and I cry on and off for the evening. Maybe it's just coincidence, but at the same time I feel like PT should not be making me feel worse. In my dream world, I'd hope for it to make me feel better, but at the very least it should make me feel nothing in particular.

On a different note, I thought my GI tract had returned to normal this morning, although shortly afterward I realized I was still having distress. Ugh. That distress continued into this evening. I'll spare you the details.

Also, I have had no appetite all day. Right before PT, I forced myself to eat something because I figured I'd probably pass out if I didn't eat anything. I ate about four bites, but it was very difficult. I don't know if the lack of appetite is due to stress or related to the GI distress or how difficult it is to actually feed oneself while on crutches or something else. The really hard thing is that I've gained a lot weight since this ordeal began because I've been really inactive for the past seven months or so. So in a way, I welcome this lack of appetite, because I'd really love to lose about seven pounds. I know that's vain and not a healthy attitude, but I'm just being honest.

This concludes tonight's pity party. Really, it hasn't been this bad all day. Something just happened tonight that really set me off, and I have no idea what it was. However, tomorrow is a new day, and hopefully I'll be better by then.