Sometimes I Think I'm Better

Today I woke up feeling pretty good. My hip felt looser and was really in a great mood. Then I decided to go for a little walk (200m one way and 200m back). At the time I thought that it would be a good thing to see if I could do it, but about 2 hours later, I was so tired and sore I went to bed. I have laid in bed for the last 5 hours and now I plan on going to bed for the night. Boo to bad and sore hips. I have a looong way to come in three weeks before I start school up again.

Sigh.

1 Month Post-Op

Today marks the four weeks mark since I had my left hip scoped. Wow have things come a long way in four short weeks. I can now walk without crutches, do stairs one at a time (when I am not too tired), drive, kick my legs in the pool, shower without help, get dressed alone (excluding socks and running shoes), and basically function on my own. Sometimes I need help with carrying things because I am still struggling to carry my own body weight, and any added weight is not reasonable to place on the hip at the moment. All in all, I am done with the worst and am trying to stay as positive as possible.

On the less than optimal side, my anterior hip capsule is extremely angry, so much so that I can't extend at all. I can get to neutral after allowing five minutes or so of slow stretching. I practice lying on my stomach for several minutes to stretch it out. It works, but the darn thing hurts so much. More of an annoying, make-your-stomach-ache-get-an-ulcer pain that hurts even with breathing. My physiotherapist stretched the hip capsule out and gave me acupuncture to try and release the anterior hip. Not only is the hip capsule angry, but my entire leg is weak and I am guarding my hip so the hip flexors are constantly contracting. If we can get this resolved, then my walking will improve leaps and bounds!

Today I got on the stationary bike at the physiotherapist's office. I have an extreme amount of atrophy of my quads and, after three minutes with no resistance, my leg was burning and then had to stop since I couldn't feel the leg anymore from being so fatigued. Imagine, 3 MINUTES and that was it! Wow I have a long way to come yet. But the acupuncture and facial release really loosened things up for a couple of hours before it went back to being tight, which means that I walk with this funny-looking with an odd swing of the pelvis and bend of the knee on the affected side. I have two weeks to get this sorted before I see my OS again. I really don't want to go back with a bad gait! I wanna show him how well I have been doing. At least there is something to work for. Short term goals are good.

As of now, I wake up in the morning with very little pain and the hip is the most mobile it is all day. As the day progresses the hip gets more and more tired, more stiff, and more painful. By the end of the day I throb, take acetaminophen, ice, and veg like a slug on the couch. Hopefully I'll start feeling a lot better soon as I only have three weeks until I jump back into full blown school with a crazy schedule. This thought kind of makes me nervous because there is no way I will return to my full schedule being fully functional at the rate I am recovering. eek!

Update

I am sitting, rather rocking on my exercise ball on the computer trying to loosen up my hip before I do my exercises and I thought that this would be a good time to update the blog. Nothing much is really new on the hip front. Today I may actually walk with less of a limp than the past couple of days. I really don't hurt too much when I walk, just that I can't extend gives me an awkward gait.

Three of the four incisions are healing up nicely. They are just red now, but not inflamed at all and are feeling much better overall. My one incision in the front is not really red, but it is pulled funny on one side; quite taut actually. There is a lump the size of a pea that is painful to touch. I am hoping this is just scar tissue or something and not a stitch stuck underneath the skin. I guess I'll wait and see how it heals up. I see my OS in two weeks (from tomorrow), so I will see what he says about it then, if it is even there. I can't wait for my follow-up as I'll get to see and have explained all my Xrays that they took, before and after the surgery, and I get to see colour pictures from inside my hip that they took with the scope. Pretty neat!

Yesterday I managed to do one normal activity. I went to church in the morning. Oh it was great to go and worship, but my goodness it really took a lot of energy. Sitting then standing., sitting then standing, repeat. I was standing and singing when the thought crossed my mind....all of these people aren't thinking anything of standing up and then there is me, trying to balance out my weight on both my good and bad sides so as not to hurt the bad side while not letting the good side get too tired. Difficult work, but worth it. When I came home I slept all afternoon.

Fast forward to today, I can now go up and down stairs with one foot on each step, no two-footing it on each step for me today. Going down is easier than going up, but I can manage both ways. I will be sure to not do too many stairs since I have a tendency to, one I can do something, over-do it and then make myself all sore and go backwards. But simple things like this really make a difference.

Enough procrastinating, I will now go and to my exercises. :)

Walking, Waiting, Wanting.

Walking.

I have not touched crutches for two days now! I am really tired because walking takes so much work, but I feel great to not have to use them. Although I can do without crutches, I still don't walk properly. I can't fully extend my left leg (due to tight anterior hip capsule.) I can't remember having the anterior hip so unhappy for my other side. I am doing all I can to stretch it out (ie lie on my stomach and relax the hip and surrounding musculature, lie on my back and relax.) These exercises must work eventually because some hip extension would be appreciated in the very near future.

Waiting.

I feel like I am waiting around, putting in my time for recovery so that I can get on with my life. Essentially, I am waiting around to get better. Not the most exciting way to spend my last summer vacation, but necessary none-the-less.

Wanting.

I am currently wanting to do much more than I am physically capable of doing. I want to go shopping for some cute outfits, I want to go for a walk, I want to work out, etc., etc., etc. But I am not able. I want to not hurt.

Despite this walking, waiting, and wanting, things are progressing well. Just wish this entire process would be slightly more speedy. Sigh.

SUTURES OUT!!!!!!!! Yayayayay!

So I am totally thrilled that I got my stitches out today. It ends up that they were not dissolvable at all, they were totally, through and through nylon. As my family doctor put it, "my butt these are dissolvable you poor thing."

Getting them out was not fun at all. All of the knots were under the skin and he had to dig them out then slice them out with a scalpel. For some of them he had to cut the skin. Normally I tolerate pain quite well, but taking out two of them really made me tense. So apparently each of them are infected under the skin and he said that if I had waited longer I would have formed cysts. Wonderful. I just hope that he got out all of the nylon suture material because he seemed to be haphazardly hacking away at the sutures. Some of the incisions yielded great amounts of material and others were just the knots tied. I can't tell if there is any left inside since they are so sore to touch. Also, they have hard lumps under each of the incisions. One of them is kind of concerning since it is a large ball and tender to touch. I certainly hope this goes away quickly.

After having my family doctor get out, hopefully, all of the stitches I have been quite sore. Even my frozen pea bags hurt simply placing them on the incision sites. But I have managed all day without crutches! Perhaps I should have used them after dinner, but I really don't want to have to go back to using them if I can help it. I had to take some acetaminophen before bed this evening since the incisions started to give me stabbing pains. I am sure in a couple of days that it will be better.

One thing is certain, in my next appointment with my surgeon, I am going to tell him how the sutures were not dissolvable. See, I was kind of paranoid about not knowing what kind of stitches I was getting because after my first scope, three of my incisions had nylon sutures that had to be removed, then the larger incision had a stabilizing stitch and steri-strips. I had called the surgeon's office and spoke with his secretary and she said that I had stitches underneath (that is what his protocol is) and it ended up that I just had the steri-strips and I started to rip open my incision, mind you not too much though because I figured out that those where holding the skin together really quickly. In order to avoid this confusion I made sure that we knew what kind of stitches I had. My Mum asked my surgeon two times after the surgery to make sure that they were dissolvable and that I didn't need to make an appointment with my family doctor to get them removed. Twice! And it still got messed up! This is kind of scary to think that we double checked and it still turned out the way it did.

I have pictures of my hip after the sutures were removed, but I don't think I'll post them. I don't want my blog to start being filled up with pictures of my hip and butt all over. This is probably the last thing somebody wants to look at!

3 Weeks Post-Op

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Today marks the three week mark. And the recovery continues...slooooooowly. Yesterday I got the go-ahead to walk around without crutches as tolerated. I almost made it all day today. Mind you, I was just lying around the house but the general things around the house I could do while gimping around. Hip extension has become my nemesis. But I have been lying more so as to stretch the anterior hip capsule in hopes of alleviating the tightness and to help with walking.

I still have my stitches and called my family doctor to make an appointment to get them removed. They are quite annoying and I know that they will heal quickly once the 'dissolvable' stitches are removed. I was quite surprised as to how quickly I could get an appointment with my family doctor! Usually it takes a couple of days, but the receptionist said that three weeks is a bit long to have stitches in and that they must be quite uncomfortable and made an appointment for tomorrow at whatever time I wished. It is nice to catch a break in the scheduling of appointments (since I have been canceled upon and shafted more than once in my hip journey.) So tomorrow....OUT THEY COME!

Here is what the hip looks like at the moment. I will post pictures once the sutures are removed.

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Baby Steps

Today I took my first couple of steps without a crutch without a massive lurch! Yay for good day! Finally my swelling has gone down slightly (enough for me to notice that I am less swollen.) Today I also managed to stand in the swimming pool a wee bit to cool down - nice a warm weather here :) Also, I just got out of our hot tub. Oh it was great on the muscles and ol' joints to get all nice and warm. Warm to the bone, literally. It relaxed everything and am happy I soaked there for a while. But I probably won't go in for a while yet, since getting in and out took two people so as I didn't fall off the edge as is inched my way into/out of the water.

There is a great firework show down near the river tonight. Famous; the largest in the continent and it is always a great show. But, I can't go. I remember a few years back all my friends wanted to go, but I couldn't because I couldn't walk far enough because my right hip would hurt me. How far have I come from that?! Now, I sit at home on the exact day rehabilitating my hip surgery on my left hip. It really is funny how small events like this mean things when I have been suffering with hip pain for so long. Oh how I long to not have hip pain. Ha, I sound like an old lady and I am only in my twenties!

Anyway, off to watch a movie on my computer :)

Until next time,

Me