@Layla, I am not scheduled for post op appt until 10/10. I was thinking I might call his nurse but I have not had much luck with call backs. The dog is ours but he’s a golden retriever puppy (6 months) that we got at my insistence over the grief I was feeling when we lost our last dog in February. I was severely depressed after we lost him. At the time, we didn’t know a surgery was coming up within months and I was the primary puppy wrangler up until the day I went into surgery.
We determined that I had to consider surgery after a trip to Paris in April where our activities were curtailed when it was clear I couldn’t walk for long periods of time. Up until then, I was in denial of how serious it was. Xrays showed the arthritic degeneration and the doctors pitch was “are you satisfied with your quality of life because it’s not going to improve without surgery”. Three years ago I had another doctor cavalierly suggest surgery. I went in concerned about stiffness not pain. She saw the xrays, diagnosed moderate OA and said, “we can fix that with surgery” before ANYTHING else had been tried. I’ve been lucky to have no major health issues prior to this so I view doctors over anxious to cut with a lot of skepticism. It feels like a sales pitch, not what’s in my best interest.
Regarding the husband, no he has no personal experience with major surgery and as I said, this I my first big health issue. We are both active and in good health. I have to cut him a bit of slack as on top of this, there are major things going on within our business that I cannot help with and are causing him a lot of stress. So he has a lot on his mind that is critical to our financial future. This is one reason I know I won’t pressure him regarding what I need. My sister was here the first week and a good friend was here for several days of the second so it definitely was not all on him during the worst part. But we were really misled by the medical team, no one addressed post op pain at all and the surgeon painted post op as easy-peasy. The nurse told us that she gets the most calls from patients concerned about swelling and blood clots...not one mention to us about pain management except the hospital would send me home with what I’d need.
Our outing was a big one. Our daughters were treating us to dinner and a concert in Philadelphia as a gift. Concert tickets were purchased in January and one daughter flew in from Boston. It involved a long car ride both ways, sitting in a restaurant, walking 4 blocks to the venue and the another 3 hours at the show. I expected to be unable to move the next morning but when I got up I felt the best I have felt post op. But as the day wore on, the pain returned and today I hurt no matter what I do. I’m uncomfortable, sitting, standing, moving or lying down.
Thank you so much for providing a place where I can vent all this. Me falling apart emotionally doesn’t help matters. While I have many good friends, I hate to dump on them. Everyone was so supportive pre op and it seemed everyone knew someone who’d had a hip replacement and had done just great! I can’t handle being the Debbie Downer.