Roller Coaster (8 Weeks + 2 Days)

I feel as if I am on some insane roller coaster ride, which I at least know is not uncommon, from reading other people's hip surgery blogs. The irony is that I've seen enough terrible things happen that I really don't take much for granted. I thank the powers that be every day for my children and for their health and for my health and for the jobs that my husband and I have that keep a roof over our heads and on and on. Yet even after reading a bunch of hip blogs, most of which were pretty much hip horror stories, I really didn't think that would be me. I worry about all sorts of things - like my kids being snatched off the playground or having a fatal allergic reaction, and ever since a friend of mine and her three kids died after being swept away by a flash flood and drowning, I worry about us being swept away by a flash flood and drowning. And considering that a few days before surgery I found out that one of my daughter's classmate's mom died during routine surgery, it did cross my mind to worry that I might actually die. But once I woke up from surgery and realized I wasn't dead, it never occurred to me I might be one of those people who didn't actually benefit from surgery, who might have to go on and have more and more surgeries, who kept a blog that lasted for five years when it should have only lasted for five months. I mean, I'm not saying I'm there yet, but over the past few days I've been having to come to terms with the possibility that this surgery didn't actually do anything for me. Because for the past few days, I have been feeling, well, exactly like I did before the surgery - the only difference being that now, in addition to hip pain, I also have a massive blood clot. Awesome.

At any rate, in case you couldn't tell, I'm in a lot of pain right now, and I am extremely unhappy about it. I know that it is possible I am feeling a lot of pain because over the past two weeks I have not only returned to work, but also tried to return to normal by doing a lot of 'normal' stuff. For example, I spent all of Monday - in honor of 'Labor Day' - working in the yard. Admittedly, this included taking a tumble off of my husband's camping stool that I was trying to use to weed, seeing as how I can still not squat down, and maybe that has something to do with my current pain, but still. It has been over eight weeks since the surgery and my gut is telling me that I shouldn't be having this much pain over eight weeks post-surgery. I also feel like my hip should be healed to the point where a little stress here and there should not result in agony. It's not as if I crashed on my bike, which despite all my temptations, I have still not tried to ride. But then again, what do I know?

I just sent an e-mail to my orthopedist telling him some of these frustrations, but I guess part of why I feel so discouraged is because I have no faith that he can do anything about it. I have no faith that anyone can do anything for me right now. I've sort of talked myself into having a good relationship with my physical therapist, and I appreciate a lot of what he has done for me, but at the same time, he's not extremely helpful with anything that pushes the limits of his rather small comfort zone. He just tells me to talk to my doctor about it. I also don't feel as if he has any sort of long-term plan for my rehab; it seems to be a lot of day-to-day improvisation. It's an unsettling feeling to know that no one is going to help you. I could completely handle the pain right now if I had faith that there was something that could be done for it, or there were at least some plan.

If I sound very bitter... well, I'm not. Not exactly, anyway. I actually really like my doctor, and his medical assistant is super sweet, which is what makes some of this frustration even more difficult for me to handle. I do actually want to feel ANGRY over a lot of this, but... I understand. I touched on this a little on my other blog, where I wrote about the similarities between my job and my orthopedist's job. When I decided to have this surgery, I had full faith in the surgeon - otherwise I'm sure I wouldn't have gone through with the surgery. I still believe he is pretty brilliant, and a very competent surgeon. Unfortunately, things haven't gone as planned, and he seems to be a little lacking in the area of 'when things don't go as planned.' Maybe this is lack of experience or something else, but whatever it is, I can relate. I'm sure he sees a ton of patients every week, just as I have a ton of students every semester. By necessity, I teach with a 'one size fits all' mentality. Medicine, in my experience, is also like this - not because practitioners don't realize that one size doesn't actually fit all, but because they don't have time for the outliers. As much as I tell students to come see me if they need help, I honestly don't know how much help I can give them if they just don't get it. I try, just as my orthopedist tries and my PT tries, but at times I fail. I can go on living with myself because I figure that what I do works for probably 70-ish % of my students, and WOULD work for another 20-ish % if they did their part, and thus, I'm only failing to meet the needs of 10-ish %. It's not a bad statistic from my point of view, it just sucks if you're in that small minority. And I seem to be in my orthopedist's minority of 'people he cannot deal with.' Like I've said before, karma is a bitch.