THR Diary of my journey to happy times

This is certainly time for the post op blues and getting cabin fever.
Good to see you are trying to keep your sense of humor in tact!
Here's a great recovery chart that kind of says it all.
d2910410865b011213e66d47cebb01db.jpeg

See squiggle ballooning out to left...for "You are Here":giggle:

All temporary so keep the faith, @Klassy
 
Hi @Klassy...thank you for making me smile with your recovery blog...you are witty :heehee:
I am a month ahead of you and continue to be surprised by the rate of progress healing is occuring. Can now get in and out of shower easily, climb up and down stairs normally and walk round the house without aids. Would love to throw crutches away but my surgeon says 2 x 3/12 mths. They cause pain in upper body and some probs with lower back ache so do use when out.
Hope the thought of where you might get is encouraging....and you find out how to use emojis which i love :wave:
 
:flwrysmile: Thanks @Cathippy, yes indeed I have finally figured out the emojis,:yes!: in the last day or two. As has been noted on this forum before, we all progress at different rates:) :-) (:

It is very encouraging to hear that you are doing well, and I look forward to following in your path. Climb up and down stairs easily, that would be wonderful, I haven’t seen half my house for a month, and anything I didn’t have the foresight to bring down pre op has to be described to husband and never turns out to be quite where I thought it was. The fuss when I wanted my teal coloured cardigan! He must have brought me every item of clothing in the wardrobe before I finally thought to call it a “green jacket”. Mind you, I think he is expecting me to get up those stairs before too long, because today I heard him vacuuming up there!

I’m also encouraged that your doc says to keep using 2 crutches for 3 months, if I’ve understood you correctly. I was feeling a wimp for still using one, sometimes two, indoors and definitely 2 for outside. Now I feel it’s ok to wait till I’m ready to let go. But I know what you mean about them causing pain in other parts of the body. Last night my hands were aching and I realised that in my anxiety about venturing into new territory I had been holding my crutches in a death grip. So today I kept reminding myself to be gentle with them.
 
Mind you, I think he is expecting me to get up those stairs before too long, because today I heard him
It's a Tell, for sure. :heehee:Watch out...Klassy is going upstairs.
Last night my hands were aching and I realised that in my anxiety about venturing into new territory I had been holding my crutches in a death grip.
I did that for a bit with my walker...I was so worried about putting too much weight on my hips, I was killing my hands and shoulders.
That new hip is stable, just all the stuff around it is super tender and sore.
 
Last edited:
Day 29 was a most excellent day.

Being now too embarrassed to use the posh furniture store for stair practice, we sought an alternative and settled on a branch of Dunelm ( sells sheets and pillows and such) which also has a cafe and stairs. I climbed the stairs both up and down, hooray. During lunch I remarked to H that the cafe chair was as comfortable as any I’d tried the day before. We got out our phones to google whether we could identify the chair, and what do you know, Dunelm sells chairs! We checked out their selection and we could buy a lovely reasonably priced comfy chair, AND in my favourite colour AND take it home right away!!! Talk about serendipity.

There was a small fly in the ointment in that H, as well as looking after me and doing the vacuuming and shopping etc, also had to fit the legs on my gorgeous new chair. These things never go easily do they? A couple of screws were missing, so H went to his shed and brought in a magnificent box of 1000 screws all sorted into little sections by size and type. I was lying down in the next room to rest and ice after my strenuous stair exploits when I heard the sound of a box of 998 screws falling and rolling to every corner of the room. Followed by muffled expletives and a lengthy period of grumbling. Poor H. I cooked dinner (with a little help) to make it up to him, and he obviously managed to see the funny side because he told me to put the saga on this forum.

And I finally got to sit in comfort and watch adorable animals on catch up TV.

Oh, and my sock aid arrived, and it works!
 
so H went to his shed and brought in a magnificent box of 1000 screws all sorted into little sections by size and type. I was lying down in the next room to rest and ice after my strenuous stair exploits when I heard the sound of a box of 998 screws falling and rolling to every corner of the room.

:holysheep: Poor hubby, what a mess :yikes: Thankfully with it all behind him he can laugh about it.
I hope the chair is worth every bit of the drama that followed it :heehee: Enjoy!
@Klassy
 
:rotfl:Life can certainly get screwy!
Poor hubby.
Glad you got your comfy chair.
You sound like you are doing beautifully Klassy.
THR is certainly a wonderful surgery.
Onward...:egypdance:
 
Are we there yet?

Obviously I knew this recovery process would be a journey, hence title of thread.

It turns out that it is in fact a particular journey. The long haul flight from Sydney to London Heathrow.

First, the anxiety of getting through the procedures and on board.

Then there is a bit of a bumpy takeoff and some feelings of travel sickness.

Things settle down. Snacks and a drink and a meal are delivered, eaten, cleared away. This isn’t so bad.

Scroll through the entertainment options. Watch a movie. Read. Listen to music. Doze a little. The seat is uncomfortable and movement is severely restricted, but really, this isn’t so bad.

Begin to think, we must be nearly there, surely. Look out the window. We are still over Australia.
 
@Klassy A long haul flight so early out of surgery? Did your surgeon know about this? Please be sure you get up and move around as much as possible during the flight. Take your blood thinning medication if prescribed.
 
@Klassy It will be a quick journey if it is a flight - I feel that it is a bit more like going from Australia to England in a 26 foot yacht through choppy seas although at least I have not been sick on my journey.
 
@Klassy yes 2 crutches to be used for 3 months. Only surgeon who does recommend this I hasten to add and if you turn up at the 3mth review your in big trouble. Truth to tell i dont use any now at home and when I have to outside I dont put any weight on them... :umm:
Are you really on your way to Australia ??
 
She's on terra firma searching for a furniture store / cafe combo
where she can do steps without listening to a sales pitch. :heehee:

Happy One Month Anniversary!
 
Last edited:
Day 30 to 31 have been slightly mixed. H had to go away overnight. Now I know from reading other threads that some brave souls go home to manage on their own straight away, and here am I a month out, but H and I were both anxious. The preparations beforehand would have suited an Antarctic expedition. The fridge was stuffed, the downstairs bathroom was overstocked with spare rolls of loo paper, etc etc. We also arranged for a kind neighbour to call in on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning, and be on call with a key to get in should I need to call for help.

Wednesday went pretty well. I got all my own meals (basic stuff) and served coffee to my visitor. I dressed myself, including shoes, and spent a few minutes walking in the garden - too cold to linger. Only less good bit was that I got carried away with chatting to my neighbour and didn’t realise I had been sitting in a chair for 90 minutes without a break. On the one hand it’s an advance on how I had been, to be able to sit that long without noticing, but on the other hand when I did eventually stand up my hip was so stiff I could barely move. I tried to walk it off by short indoor walks for the rest of the evening but it didn’t get back to the ease of movement I had before.

Wednesday night I slept poorly. I think there were 3 reasons. My makeshift bedroom doesn’t have a blind or curtains and H has made a temporary blind which he puts up each night, but I can’t manage it. Given the choice between blocking out the daylight for 2 days or putting up with light from the street for 1 night, I opted for light at night, which was probably a mistake. Also I was very aware of being alone in the house. And finally I didn’t get the foot rub which has become my goodnight treat.

Thursday morning I woke with a headache. After washing but before I’d brushed my teeth I began to feel a bit woozy. It was probably nothing, but not only did I faint 5 days after surgery, I had also fainted 2 weeks before, for the first time in my life. So I know it can happen and I was scared. I got out of there as fast as possible and back to bed, where I would have a soft landing, and guzzled lots of water. I lay there for a couple of hours and was very grateful that my neighbour was coming soon, and managed to get myself out of bed and dressed before she arrived to chat with her, remembering to get up and walk around every few minutes. After she left I retreated to bed again with a plate full of snacks in case I felt like lunch and a bucket in case I was sick. Happily the snacks won and I felt much better by time H came home. I felt fine all evening, but when I went to brush my teeth before bed I felt a bit off again. I wasn’t going to give in again, so marched on the spot to keep the blood circulating. I don’t know, it was probably psychological, picking up the toothbrush brought back the sensation.

Hopefully this is all nothing, just putting it down here so that if this is an ongoing thing I can trace the development. Too much thinking probably.
 
Hi there! Following your recovery with great interest and you made me laugh out loud several times. Btw, the rate my recovery is going feels like swimming underwater from Australia to London with extra weight in my BCD against a strong and variable current!

Re the sitting for 90 minutes and stiffness after. I totally get that! I have to make myself get up every hour at work and walk around starting off a bit like a mechanical doll. My physio told me if I was planning to get up to squeeze my glutes beforehand and to also stretch the calf muscles out from a sitting position prior to standing.

Josephine has a diagram for that exercise. It really does help.

However, a long taxi ride yesterday with me sitting in the back caused my creaky knee to moan after 2 weeks of it behaving itself.

The good news is that the hip is doing well!

Please advise as to how to get ones hubby to do a foot massage. Lucky you! I would love that. Mine would run a mile.
 
@SurreyGirl - I thought you were from Surrey not Yorkshire (I suspect that not everyone on the forum will be familiar with the Python sketch). I currently feel as I have been swimming the English Channel with the shore in sight but a strong tide making the destination seem a long way off.

@Klassy - being on your own for the first time so soon after the op is a bit scary. I was lucky enough to have someone around for almost all of the first 6 weeks. I even had my 89 year old mother come round to look after me (while I made her tea) in the early stages when my wife went out. Life got so much better around the 6 week mark when I could start to do a lot more and in particular when I got rid of the TED stockings - I couldn't even take the right one off by myself and had to rely on my wife to take them off and put them off and then wait in between while I showered. Mind you the advantage of the TEDs was that I didn't need a sock device as I didn't wear any socks for the first 6 weeks!!
 
Hi @SurreyGirl , I hope your knee has settled, good to hear your hip is doing well. Could you direct me to the diagram of stretch you mention?

@HertsHippy yes H had to take off and put on both my Teds, and really battled with them. I asked for and got permission to discard them after 3 weeks, made us both happy! I sometimes think they prescribe these things solely for the boost we get when we stop. I was literally euphoric for days after I was permitted to stop jabbing myself in the stomach with bloodthinning meds.

Day 32 has been very uneventful. I slept really well last night and woke feeling so much better. Just pottering today with a spell of up and down the garden path between the drizzle. I’m taking a few tiny shuffling steps without aids, not pushing it but just letting it happen eg when I am navigating round the kitchen. I can stand without support which makes things like showering so much easier. I still only shower with husband hovering, but I can shampoo my hair with both hands with eyes shut. I still had to go back to bed for a lie down after the shower because balancing is such a workout, but felt fine after the rest and ice. Similarly I can prepare a simple meal, eg hold veggies in one hand and chop with the other. But then I need to lie down before I can sit and eat it. My patience muscle is really getting a workout. And I think my calves may have a word tomorrow because I can feel they have been working to keep me balanced. And although I really try not to lean on the crutch, my right hand is sore. But hey, the hip is good!
 
:egypdance: The Hip is Good.
Such beautiful words!
Good that things will soon go from good...to great!
Hope your evening is Sweet!:tada:
 

BoneSmart #1 Best Blog

Staff online

  • Jaycey
    ADMINISTRATOR Staff member since February 2011

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
65,167
Messages
1,596,864
BoneSmarties
39,356
Latest member
JanieMarie
Recent bookmarks
0
Back
Top Bottom