Dan's "Hip" Story

I think it was Thomas Wolfe who said, “You can never go home again.” While I was extremely relieved to be home from the hospital, in the back of mind I was also a bit anxious. What changes were in store for me now that I was part man, part machine? I quickly concluded that since I was only four days removed from my surgery, I still had a long way to go to regaining my “normal” life.

My right hip looked like it had gone 12 rounds with Muhammad Ali holding a meat tenderizer and a staple gun. My industrious and over-protective girlfriend was busily setting up a bed for me on the first floor (a precaution that was not mandated by the doctor, I might add). The dog (a Boston terrier named Poki) was staring at me with a look of unmistakable concern (well, either that or he needed to go to the bathroom).  My buddy Pain was still with me, of course. He was actually setting up some sort of cot next to the bed my girlfriend was constructing, whistling something reminiscent of a funeral dirge.

I was definitely still hurting, and now that I was home instead of the hospital, I didn’t have access to as much pain medication. Oh well, pain is weakness leaving the body, I reminded myself. I also reminded myself that the drill instructor that burned that mantra into my head used to make us dig six foot graves for sand fleas that we wrongfully murdered, so maybe he wasn’t the best source for sagely advice.

(If you don’t know what a sand flea is, consider yourself blessed. Imagine mosquitoes, only smaller and in quantities multiplied by the hundreds. Our drill instructors at Parris Island apparently had a great affinity for them, since it was commonplace for our instructors to strip us down to our underwear at about two in the morning and have us stand “at attention” outside to feed the fleas. For those who have no military background, when at attention, you are not permitted to move, not even if a ravenous plague of mini-mosquitoes is using you as an all-you-can-eat buffet. After a few weeks of this, everyone looked like they had the chicken pox, but I imagine the sand flea population was pretty happy.)

Anyway, I decided to leave my girlfriend and Pain to their construction efforts, and I retreated to my reclining chair in the living room. If you plan on having hip replacement surgery, you really should invest in a nice reclining chair. My Lazy Boy was probably the only piece of furniture in the house that was comfortable and did not force me to violate one the three sacred hip precautions. See, after surgery you are given three primary hip precautions that you have to adhere to for three months. They all involve certain ways you are not allowed to move your new hip. Apparently, until the muscles completely heal around the new hip, there is a dislocation risk. Suffice it say dislocation of your brand new hip would probably not only be painful, but it would also equate to hitting the reset button on your entire recovery effort. Not something I was interested in doing.

I used my crutches to carefully lower myself into my chair, and as I settled in I took note of my incision, which was still bleeding at a pretty good clip. I could see it was starting to soak through my sweatpants a bit. The nurses would usually correct me when I would mention the bleeding, calling it “drainage,” because the liquid was apparently more water than blood. I’m sure they are scientifically correct, but if it’s red and it’s leaking out of a giant wound on my body, I’m going to refer to it as blood. So anyway, I was “draining” through about two double-stacked bandage pads every three hours, which my girlfriend said seemed pretty excessive. Since she’s a cardiac Intensive Care Unit nurse I  usually deferred to her opinions. 

The folks at the hospital were aware of my high “drainage” levels and said it was probably due to my prescribed blood thinner (when you have a surgery like a total hip replacement, there is a potential for blood clotting, so to decrease the likelihood of clotting they either give you Kumadin or Lovonox. Thinner blood, more bleeding when cut, or in my case stapled, back together). It looked pretty gruesome, but it really wasn’t a big deal.

Comfortable in my reclining chair and finally in my own home, all I wanted to do was sleep. I really hadn’t slept that well in the hospital, and I was skeptical about whether being home would change that. Apparently Poki was ready for a nap too and, he hopped up on my lap (it’s funny how pets seem to sense when you are hurting and respond to it).  I started to doze, my thoughts lingering on inventions of hyperbolic healing chambers that could speed up the recovery process, and I fell into my first deep sleep since my surgery. I was home, in my Lazy Boy, with my Boston terrier and a blanket keeping me warm. Maybe Thomas Wolfe was wrong.