No News is Good News (16 Weeks + 1 Day)

I don't have a lot to say, and that is a GOOD thing. Very good!

• My hip still feels good! Given that I was feeling good the last time I saw my orthopedist, and that I'm still feeling good, I must be going on almost four weeks of feeling good. I still have low-level pain, and pain when I get up after sitting for a while (déjà vu all over again), but it is so much better than it has been, and even better than it was before surgery (um, finally). It seems sort of ridiculous to be excited over the fact that almost four months after surgery, I feel better than before the surgery, but, hey, whatever. 
• Of all the things I've tried post-surgery, it seems like the best thing I've done for my hips is to stop physical therapy. (LOL - What's wrong with this picture?)
• My surgeon's MA called me last week, on Friday. My cell phone told me it was from ABC Orthopedics, which immediately made me nervous. It was my orthopedist's MA, who seems like a super sweet woman. I don't know if it's because she really cares a lot or if it's because it's her job to clean up after unresponsive orthopedists and she's just really good at her job, but either way, she's always super nice and seems extremely competent as well. I was relieved it was her and not my orthopedist (although who are we kidding - why would it be him?). She said she had gotten 'another e-mail' from me and went on to say that she was sorry my doctor hadn't responded to me, that she had given him my results, and said that she would have stayed on him if she knew he hadn't gotten back to me. Eventually I figured out that she was talking about the nastygram I sent on Tuesday, and I told her that my doctor had in fact gotten back to me. She seemed relieved, and when I told her, 'Yes, I finally worked a response out of him,' she laughed somewhat knowingly and said apologetically, 'I'm sorry you feel like we aren't taking care of you.' She actually sounded very sincere and not snarky or anything. Since I was at work and didn't really want to get into it with her (it's not her fault), plus I was shocked by her apology and didn't know how to respond, I just said, 'Oh, well, thank you for that,' and confirmed that I would see them on November 7th. And that was that.
• In other other news, I've been having some GI issues. I'll spare you the details. LOL. They started about two weeks ago after having sushi, which can always be a cause for concern - though I've never gotten sick from sushi, even sushi that I've eaten in a strip mall in Nevada. (I can't say the same for McDonald's.) However, since no one else in my family got sick, I ruled out the sushi. Of course my next concern was that it is the medication I'm on, as both the Xarelto and the meloxicam are causes for concern. And then there is always the concern that I'm just a hypochondriac, and the anxiety I cause myself by being a hypochondriac either causes or exacerbates symptoms I already have (which may be due to anxiety from hypochondria or 'real' reasons). I do have some experience with GI stuff, and GI stuff is tricky. Eventually I concluded that anxiety and hypochondria alone were unlikely to produce such nasty symptoms for so long. (In my experience, anxiety can produce pain, but not usually bleeding.) So, I stopped taking meloxicam on Friday because of concern over my GI tract, plus the fact that my hip is still feeling pretty good. I figured it would be a good test for my hip, and not taking meloxicam hasn't had any effect on my hip. Granted, it has also not had much of an effect on my GI tract, but I have to figure if it's having zero effect, good or bad, I might as well not take it.
• I've been feeling sort of crappy overall, so I added Vitamin D back in to my pill-taking regimen. So now instead of taking Xarelto + meloxicam in the morning, I take Xarelto + Vitamin D. So far it doesn't seem to be helping, when I subtract out the possible placebo effect. Which leads me back to my original diagnosis of anxiety and hypochondria. HA!

To summarize: overall, things are looking good. Time is flying; it seems like last week that I saw my orthopedist, but I know it has been almost a month because next week I have book club on Thursday night followed by the orthopedist on Friday, which seems to be fairly standard these days. Also, on the Sunday following my appointment, I will turn 40, which will make my '39 and Hip' moniker seem a bit passé, but hopefully it means I won't have much more to say about my hip, which was certainly my hope when I started writing this. :)