From
@EL11 re my question about right vs left hip, bad vs worse hips and relative recovery times
Parking here for posterity:
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@1stSurgery I am having trouble getting to your thread. Could you give me the URL, or paste in my response?
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On a hip related note: I'm asking all double hippies to please weigh in if you could at my thread on the difference in recovery between each hip.... related to the degree of arthritic damage to each, before surgery. Trying to see if that relationship is across the board or random.
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EL11 said:
I had my right hip done first. The left hip hurt worse, which the OS said was because of something to do with blood not getting to the vessels, necrosis/necrotic/something like that. But the right was bone-on-bone and used to catch sometimes when I was walking up stairs, and I was afraid if I did the left first I could suddenly get stranded.
I had a lot more trouble sleeping after the first replacement. I'm a side sleeper, like many people, and it was torturous trying to sleep on my back, though the memory foam wedge sometimes made it OK. The worst part was that the hip would go into spasm and I simply couldn't relax. Though as I've said elsewhere I'm having this kind of smarting quad pain with the second/left hip, and feeling the need for more meds, that spasm thing is nonexistent. And I'm sleeping on my back with no problem, 7-8 hours at a time. I almost can't believe it.
Anyone who answers your question will be dealing with a different situation—not just because everybody's body is different, but there's some influencing factor at work with the other hip, like the arthritis there is getting worse or you strain it by depending on it more; in my case, I had the second surgery 7 weeks to the day after the first. I was walking unaided at that point but would have little setbacks. My gut feeling is that the short-term healing might have been 10 weeks for that side, but now I'm stressing it out somewhat.