Well here I sit, nine weeks post-op, and about ready to throw these crutches out the window! My apologies in the lack of updates, but the end of the school year madness got the best of me. I ended up back at school four weeks post-op and finished the school year (about five weeks) only missing one more day of school. Getting back into my routine was great for my attitude and mental health, but a day chasing around middle school students led to very early bedtimes for me. My time back at school was spent in my roller chair, moving around my classroom trying to stay sitting most of the day. I am lucky to work with awesome people who checked on me, made copies for me, and occasionally pushed me down the hallway in my roller chair :)
Getting back to the urge to hurl these crutches out the window. My recovery is going well, minimal daily pain (haven't taken pain meds in over a month, and rarely have to have any Aleve). Now do I have my bad days? Yes, of course. I went to my cousin's wedding and had a blast, but way over did it. And I paid for it. Then we had a field day type day at school and I spent all day outside and over did it again. I ended up taking the next day off school (my co-workers rock and covered for me) and it took me the weekend to recover. I know my limits, and if you know me, I tend to push them a little bit. I have to give myself a pat on the back though, I am doing a pretty darn good job of following the rules of my therapy. While I have dreams (yes dreams) of throwing down my crutches and just taking off on a nice long run, I have yet to break the rules.
What I have been breaking on the other hand, is my crutches. It started about six weeks post op when I broke through my first one at school. The damage...
I ended up getting a new pair of crutches, and since then I have broken 2 more crutch tips. I think it's just a sign I need to get rid of these things. I am SO ready to be done with them that I am going David Letterman style and making a Top Ten List...
The Top Ten Things I look forward to being off crutches....
10. Not having to wear pants with pockets all of the time to carry my stuff around
9. Not being up for an hour in the middle of the night after going to the bathroom, by the time I get up and get going on my crutches I am awake and can't fall back asleep
8. Getting around OSU's campus without getting the sympathy stares
7. Not having to start every sentence with, "Gabe, can you please bring me..." (he is probably more excited about this than I am!)
6. Not having to carry a backpack everywhere
5. Not having to use these carts (battery dies in the middle of the store every stinkin' time) at the grocery
4. Not taking 10 minutes to go up and down the stairs
3. Being able to carry an umbrella on rainy days and not fearing for my life walking around places with wet floors
2. Getting back into the kitchen and cooking while standing on two legs, my poor left leg needs a vacation
1. Walking and being able to scratch my nose at the SAME TIME! You don't know how annoying it is to have to stop, scratch your nose, and then resume.
There you have it folks, hopefully the day is near where all of these little dreams come true!
In therapy news, I am still in the pool and doing my home therapy once a day on my own. It's getting to the point where a lot of these exercises are easy, but given that I am non-weight bearing until I see Dr. Byrd again, I am limited in what I can do. We head to Nashville June 24 for my next appointment with Byrd and hopefully begin my transition off of crutches. Now I know I won't be able to ditch them all together, but I am HOPEFUL that since I am young and was pretty strong going in, that once I increase weight on my leg that I can ditch them pretty quickly. In all honesty, as excited as I am to get off of these things, it's scary at the same time. I have been dependent on them to get around for over two months now. I will do exactly as instructed so I don't do anything to mess up what is done. I am hopeful that my low pain levels means successful healing, but we will see in a few weeks!
Sorry for the long update, I will update again after my next appointment with Dr. Byrd and keep you all posted! Thanks for all of your love on this long road to recovery :)
Today was my first day in the pool and I am EXHAUSTED. It was great to get moving, but it was definitely tiring. I started by doing some walking in the pool, forward, backward and sideways. The weirdest part was how the bottom of my foot felt walking on the ground. It hasn't touched the ground with much weight in a long time so getting myself to do a heal-toe walk was challenging.
From there I did some leg swings, squats, calf raises, and finally walking on the under water treadmill. That was the coolest! It helped me stand up straight and not favor my bad leg as much because I had to keep up with the pace. There were three other hip rehab patients in the pool with me, but I was the only one under the age of 60. All the other ladies had hip replacements. It was motivating to me because if I do this right and rehab like I should then I hope to not have to be in their shoes when I get older. They were funny, it definitely helped the time pass with other people in there with me. I did a lot today, but it was to gauge how I feel and what we can do in the future.
Overall I feel like today was a push in the right direction. It was challenging and I definitely feel like I am making progress. I will keep you all posted! :)
I had my second therapy appointment with Curt today. I have been doing my home therapy twice a day, but since we are reaching the two week post-op mark, it was time to switch some things up. I think the thing I struggle with most with therapy is finding where my pain threshold is for each exercise and not going past that. For an active person like myself, doing leg lifts and ankle pumps are pretty much torture. I want to try to do more, but I know that's not what I should be doing, so I don't.
I realized today that I need to start seeing the progress that I am making in therapy instead of the things that I can't do anymore. It's frustrating to feel like starting over, but when I get off crutches I am going to have to learn to walk again, and so I need to be strong enough when that time comes. I start my pool therapy on Thursday. Curt said I will feel like I can do more when I'm in the pool so I am hoping that is more encouraging! I did get to ride a stationary bike today. I started just rocking the pedals back and forth and by the end of my 5 minutes was doing complete circles around. It felt good to get my knee up and moving, it's been getting stiff laying in bed so much.
I will update more after the pool on Thursday!
When I started this blog I promised the good, the bad, and the ugly. Well here comes some bad and ugly. I want to be truthful and helpful to people who might be heading toward this surgery. I tell my students all of the time that if I taught them that life is full of rainbows and butterflies and nothing bad will ever happen or tempt them then I would be the worst teacher in the world because I would be setting them up for failure. Here is my reality, no rainbows and butterflies in this post...
I had my first kick in the pants of reality this weekend. I had two big outings that really pushed me and set me back. I attended a charity basketball game on Friday night, then a bridal shower on Saturday afternoon, and the combination led to a meltdown Saturday night. My pain was up significantly and I was tired, so naturally I threw a pity party for one. It was the first day where I felt like I had major hip surgery. I didn't want to paste on a smile anymore and say everything was okay because I honestly didn't feel like it was. Thankfully Gabe was here to calm me down and reassure me that everything is going to be okay. He's been such a trooper during all of this, I don't know where I would be without him.
I have come to accept there will be bumps in the road, today was the first one and I am sure there will be many to come. Hoping tomorrow brings less pain and more smiles.
I can't believe it has been one week since my surgery. It feels like it is going by fast, hopefully I don't jinx myself by saying that! Today I met with Dr. Edwards for the first time since October. He was trilled to hear my positive review of Nashville and took a look at my pictures from surgery. I was happy to hear him say that with the microfracture and labral tear I will hopefully heal stronger with all of the blow flow going into the joint. The nice part about the therapists and doctors being in the same building is we could just walk next door to talk to Curt about therapy. I won't have to go see Dr. Edwards until after my next trip to Nashville in June. Curt will keep him updated as we go and consult as needed.
In other news, I got my sutures out today! They put steri-strips over my incisions and those will fall off in two weeks or so. With all my icing, I still have a significant amount of bruising around my incisions. They said that was normal and it would probably be worse if I weren't icing as much as I am. Here is an updated picture after the sutures out:
I promise I have taken a shower (several!) since I have been home. Dr. Byrd's initials just won't wash off!
I had my first PT appointment today. I am doing my therapy here in Columbus at the Ohio Therapy Institute. It's connected to my orthopedists office which is great because the doctors and therapists work together just like Dr. Byrd's office in Nashville. My therapist is Curt and he is awesome. I met with him before my surgery to do some at home therapy to strengthen before surgery. Today we pretty much went through what my surgery was like, and the protocol that the therapy team in Nashville sent home with me. I am SO lucky to be working with the Ohio Therapy Institute not only for the great people but also for their equipment. They have a therapy pool as well as treadmill that you can use in the water that is a dream for patients like me that are non-weight bearing. My first 8 weeks of therapy will be in the pool. I am happy to have had this surgery right as pools are about to open. This will be a HUGE advantage for me because I can do my home therapy in the pool too. Overall today was super successful and I am confident in my recovery path ahead!
If I had to give anyone going into this surgery any advice at all, it would be to invest in the Game Ready icing machine. This thing has been my crutch through out my recovery thus far. Dr. Byrd's office gives you this as an option, but it beats ice packs any day. How it works is you rent this to bring home with you for two weeks. It was $300 for the two weeks, and insurance will not cover it. I have known so many people with knee replacements and different types of surgeries that have used similar machines, so I knew it would be worth the price. I honestly do not know what I would have done the first ten hours without it. It helps numb any pain, and I really think that I have done so well (with very minimal pain medicine which is important to me) so far with my recovery because of it.
Here's out it works:
This is the machine it self, you fill it with water and ice and it circulates the ice water.
Here is where the ice goes:
Here is the hip adapter (aka my ice pants!) It kind of fits like a diaper the hose connects to the machine to circulate the cold water. It also inflates to create a cold compression. It will not go below 32 degrees, but circulates the ice cold water which helps numb a lot of my pain. It has several settings, but my setting is to have it on for 30 minutes and off for 30 minutes.
My schedule right now pretty much revolves around this device. I wake up in the morning usually to some significant pain (I take one pain pill at night around 11PM, and I pretty much wake up like clock work at 6AM in pain). I put this on when I first wake up to numb the pain, and then try to go back to sleep for a little bit. I get up and do my first round of therapy in the morning, spend the day sitting in the game ready, get up and sit at the table for dinner, therapy round number 2, and then spend the rest of the night in the machine before bed. For the first few weeks it is really important for me to stay off my feet as much as possible. I will post more about my room set-up advice in another post! I learned in the hotel not to sleep in this bad boy. I woke up freezing cold in the middle of the night and at that point I need help getting in and out of it. Now I am pretty good at getting myself in and out, I just need help getting it filled with ice and turning it on.
The final thing that I would advise is using a theraband to help keep your feet together. They advised me after surgery to limit the external rotation of my hip. When you lay down and relax your legs and feet they naturally rotate outwards. This isn't good for the hip joint after the surgery. Erica gave me a theraband to put around my toes while I'm laying down to prevent this rotation for happening. It's not tight, but it allows me to relax my legs without worrying about the rotation.
It was easy to bring from Nashville to Columbus in this carrying case. It has tons of padding so we actually just checked it and got it at baggage claim. No damage!
Tomorrow is my first day of PT! More to come...
