Hello! I am getting my left hip done on Monday, too. My regret is that I put so much time between when I scheduled the appointment and the actual surgery date. I spent a lot of it just frittering away the days and not being productive, thus generating a bit of anxiety. Also opened a window of opportunity for concerned friends and family to come up with all types of "scenarios" -- such as my steep steps, etc. On the plus side, I was able to do a fair amount of cooking and freezing of meals, so I'll only need to have helpers fetch fresh produce, dairy, etc. for a few weeks until I can drive.
I'm finding that I am easily accomplishing yesterday (and today and a bit tomorrow) what I
thought I'd need about 10 weeks to do. But... for example, today is nearly a perfect day weather-wise. It's a bit on the cool side and very low humidity. Actually, my bad hip doesn't feel too bad today. The weather is supposed to be about the same for next week. I think I will get to go home on Thursday. Now that I recall, that's part of the reason that drove my decision to wait. My joints are very sensitive to humidity.
I had my pre-op on Wednesday. That was a terrible pain day. The temperature was trying to push from close to 80 into the lower 60's and it poured rain on an off that day and Tuesday and Thursday. Fortunately, I had a ride and dodged any rain. The scheduling nurse who did the phone intake told me my joint replacement class was at 1:15. When I got there about 12:50, I was told the class started at noon. GRRRRrrrrrr... She'd also told me wrong location. When I finally arrived the class, I found out that the hospital had me in the system as needing a KNEE replacement. Good fun. The nurse had me stay after the meeting and went over a few things with me -- no big deal and the presentation was based on a booklet she handed to me, which was more or less the same booklet the OS office sent me several months ago. I met a nice lady who is with the same OS group as I am. She is having a knee replacement the same time I'm having my surgery. We'll hook up in rehab.
Other than that, I had a wonky wheelchair. It was too small and something was amiss with the left side where you rest your leg and foot. It was very uncomfortable and nobody seemed to be able to locate a better one. The phone intake nurse also told me that I was to have a chest x-ray and EKG and then I was told that my surgeon didn't require that. That could have really thrown my ride off schedule, but he was early, so it worked out. I met the anesthesiologist and she was very nice and told me I'd be having a general, which was my preference.
Another good thing is that the orthopedic floor is all private rooms, for infection control purposes. They also sent me home with my own BP cuff and finger clip for taking my vitals. I have to take that back with me on Monday.
The OS office said that the patients had to stay for the 3:00 p.m. group PT session on the day of discharge and the hospital said patients were discharged at noon.
All of this miscommunication is irritating me. I just want for this to be over with. Tomorrow is a day of football to distract me and hopefully the KC Royals game will be on TV Monday night (if I'm not zonked out!) However, I'm not letting them give me a single dose of meds until I've met with my OS and he's marked my LEFT HIP for surgery!! LOL! Don't mean to sound so perpetually cranky, but I get so annoyed with health care delivery in general. I won't even go into the story about all of the hassle I had to go through to get Apria to deliver my walker to my apartment.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who has run into snafus. Good luck to
@Was_86 and all of the other October Fiesties!
United States
