Today is two weeks!! Hard to believe, time is going by quickly. Things are going well, I think. I called my surgeon's office about my stomach ache and asked for a prescription to help protect the stomach. His response (well, his assistant's) "we're sending a prescription for Lovenox to be used subcutaneously for the next 10 days." So now I'm doing injections. I don't really mind the injection, it just seems a bit like overkill, and expensive! Oh well. At least my stomach feels absolutely fine now.
My post op instructions are for using my "assistive device" in my case crutches, for a minimum of two weeks. I can tell you I'm not ready to put down the crutches or graduate to a cane. When I'm walking outside I try to put a minimum of weight on the crutches, and everything feels great, no pain. But take away that tiny amount of support and things don't feel ok at all. There is a really sore place (muscular, I think) at the front of my hip that does not feel good when I don't use the crutch. I guess this will take a while longer. I have no desire to "push through" this discomfort.
My only real concern at this point is my incision. A few days ago my curiosity about what is causing it to be SO lumpy under the steristrips got the best of me. I tend to surgical incisions, including being the person who sews them up at the conclusion of surgery, all the time at work, so I felt I could safely remove strips, inspect, and replace with new, sterile strips). Well, what I found under the steristrips was unpleasant. The edges of the wound are well knit together. There is no redness, exudate, warmth, or any of the signs of infection that would normally concern me. But I don't know what the person who closed (my surgeon's physician assistant, I believe) did to make things so lumpy!! It's really kind of awful, to tell the truth. I was stunned, and again, this is coming from someone who has spent many years watching surgical incisions heal. There are 5 separate places where skin from lateral to the incision was "caught," either by a stitch, or by the dissolvable staples, and pulled in toward the incision. So there are big gathers, or tethered spots, and both piled up places and voids (divots) everywhere they did this.
The entire incision is not this way. The distal end (toward my foot) looks absolutely fine. But the majority of it looks truly bad. I mean cosmetically, not healing-wise. If I ever closed an incision and it looked like this when I finished, I would hope someone in the OR (circulating nurse, anesthesiologist) would say to me "you need to fix that." I did have the physician I work with, who I assist at surgery, look at it. He tried to be optimistic, said he thought the "caught" places would release as the staples dissolved. This is hard for me to picture, but I'm trying to go with that for now.
I have a question for you other hipsters about the position of your incision, if you had a direct anterior approach. The upper end of my incision starts at, and is directly on top of, my hip bone where it sticks up if I am lying flat on my back. It seems like a challenging location to put the incision, right on top of a bony protuberance. The skin is thin and, having had a 9 1/2 pound baby once upon a time, stretchy as all get out. There is little or no subcutaneous fat in this area to cushion the incision. I don't know if this is why I have a distinct burning sensation sometimes as the incision slides over the bone right below it. The lower part of the incision (which looks fine) is on my upper thigh, a few inches below where my thigh meets my abdomen. The whole incision angles outward (laterally) from top to bottom about 45 degrees from vertical (straight up and down).
Anyone else have an incision that starts directly on top of the hip bone? If so is it healing ok? I guess I should tag some of you if I want replies.......@Library,
@sunbunny ,
@JulieJF,
@Legin,
@Realhippy49,
@buzzybee,
@fearbox, moderators. Thanks everyone. I am not freaking out, I'm just disappointed that something that I truly know something about, was done so poorly on me. And, if it heals as lumpy as this I can't quite imagine how it will feel when I tighten my backpack waistbelt on top of this thing (it's exactly where a backpack rests most of its weight--on the hip bone).
Yikes!! Long scary post!!
United States
And it sounds as though you're doing really well!
