One Month Post-LPAO

Today was my one month post-op appointment with Dr. Millis and the team. I already had a feeling my left hip was healing faster than my right hip had earlier this year, but my appointment today confirmed this.

I got the standard x-rays before seeing the team: supine AP and false profile. When I went over the films with Erin, she pointed out the areas of bridging -- where the bone had begun knitting to fill the cracks. My bones have done a spectacular amount of knitting in the past month! The cut in the illium was barely visible (except the big gap to fill caused by moving the acetabulum), and the other two cuts were bridging nicely. I'll try to get the films so I can post them. Both Dr. Millis and Erin were impressed.

I reported that I am down to two Percocet a day, one in the morning and one before bed; Valium occasionally as needed. That strange pain (that I thought might be a ligament) is completely gone now. I still take one Atarax at nighttime. I am sleeping much better now, able to sleep comfortably on both sides now, as well as on my back. I still have the strange pulling feeling at my epidural site, so Erin told me to let them know if it got worse or continued much longer.

Erin did my range of motion tests and they were good as well. My hip can bend below 90 degrees towards my chest now and rotation was good. My straight leg raise was high and strong, too, which I think is because I was in good shape going into the surgery. I think if the muscles around your hip are strong going in, it can only help in the recovery.

When it came to movement, I admitted that I'd been putting more weight on the leg this past week. Erin had me walk with one crutch and then a few steps without crutches. One crutch felt OK but without crutches I definitely felt that sinking feeling you get when the leg is not ready to take the weight yet. So I am officially allowed to start using one crutch, but always keep the other around in case I need support or my gait becomes uneven "like a penguin," to quote Erin. Great news, huh?

I am allowed to go to the gym now, with far fewer restrictions than I had post-RPAO. I can do the stationary bicycle at zero resistance to start, as usual, but I can increase duration and resistance faster this time. And I can do any upper body and core exercises I want, provided my hip feels fine when I'm doing them. This is great news because the faster I can start getting back into shape the better; I'd rather not lose as much fitness as I did after the right hip surgery.

It is amazing how much different this recovery has gone compared to my recovery in March. Other women have said that one hip is always worse than the other, but you never know which one will be the bad one. Imagine if this one had been worse than the RPAO! But luckily it is going fantastically so far, and I'm feeling really great. But I doubt I would have appreciated the speed and ease of this recovery as much if I hadn't had such a rough go of it in March.

So good news overall, but there's still a lot of healing to do. I am going to try not to get overexcited about this progress, and continue to take it slow and steady so I can keep knitting away as well as I have been. I return to see Dr. Millis and the team in four weeks (Dec. 29), but I'll update here before then, to report on how the new weight-bearing and gym visits are going.

Recovery Day 4 -- Wireless!

Last night was a terrible night because of the rash. Even though I finally got some steroid creams last night, the itching and discomfort was hardly vanquished, and I had to keep calling for Nubain and Benadryl in between my steroid cream applications.

This morning I wanted nothing more than to leap out of bed, have a shower (preferably stripping away several layers of rash-infested skin in the process) and then marinate myself in steroid cream. Last time I had this operation, I absolutely dreaded getting out of bed because it was so painful and logistically difficult. I think the rash is worse this time around, but I know that getting into and out of bed is somehow much less difficult, so it makes sense that I'm much more amenable to getting out of bed.

Nonetheless, I spent most of my morning in bed, working. So much for taking off from work for two weeks after surgery! Dr. LaReau stopped by to check on me, I ate some fruit salad, time passed.

At 10 my catheter came out. With that, I was wireless! No more leads, IVs, drains, nothing. Just me and my rash.

Finally Kimber came for PT, and it was time to get out of bed again. It went better this time; I was more confident with the limits of what I could do, and I also trusted Kimber more. Once up and in my wheelchair, I was taken to the PT room to try walking on the parallel bars. Again, I was pretty confident about it -- after all, this had been a less invasive surgery and I had already done this learning-to-walk-again thing before.

As all you proverb fans probably guessed, it went terribly. At least I felt it did. Just like in March, I couldn't slide my op-side foot forward to save my life. I was so disappointed and confused. This time they didn't cut that muscle! It is supposed to work! Why can't I move my foot?! Kimber helped me slide my op-side foot forward for each "step" but it just felt like cheating. I couldn't do it myself. The whole endeavor hurt my hip and my pride and I felt like a sad failure. I had thought it would be so much easier than in March and it wasn't.

At least when I got back to my room my sheets were changed. But I didn't get to take that long-awaited shower because (of COURSE) I got the only room on the floor with a bathtub instead of a walk-in shower. Perfect. So I had to wait for a new room to open up so I could switch rooms to take a shower. Which meant getting back into bed to stew in my own boiling skin for a few more hours.

I have been on oral pain medication since the epidural came out yesterday, but I still feel like they are not yet covering my pain properly. There are "gaps" where the pain comes through and when I ask if it is time for some more medicine I end up having an hour or more to wait.

Just like in March, I feel like I always have more pain than I "should" have. I know it is probably in my head, but I just get this vibe from people like they think I can't possibly be in pain when I am taking "so much" medication. But I am not exaggerating my pain. When I ask for medication, it is because the pain is at a distracting level, like 5 to 7. Actually, earlier today, when I told one of my nurses my pain had returned and asked if I could have some more medicine she looked at her watch and sort of sighed disapprovingly and said "you are already on a lot of medication..." It sucks to feel simultaneously like a sissy and a junkie.

At around 15:00 two doctors from dermatology came to look at my rash. They didn't take any photos so I guess they were "the deciders." After some chin-stroking they presented exactly no new ideas and no new solutions. So once again dermatology comes up a day late and a diagnosis short. Give me my steroid creams and go away now please.

In the afternoon I got out of bed again for a second session of PT with Kimber. Needless to say, I was not feeling positive about it, but since I had to get out of bed to get my shower anyway, I figured I might as well hit the parallel bars along the way. For some reason, this time it all went much better. Kimber still had to help me move my left foot forward, but at least it felt like I was contributing this time.

And so I earned my reward. Ahh, a shower and a steroid cream body mask. What a spa treatment. After that I was feeling (and looking) much better, so when Dr. Millis stopped by this evening he was happy to see me looking revived. He said everything is going so well that I might even get discharged tomorrow afternoon. The only things left on my to-do list are final x-rays and showing PT I can climb stairs on crutches. And we all know I can do that. Right?

Recovery Day 2 -- Awakened by Pain and PT

After a calmer-than-usual night of sleep, I was awakened by Dr. LaRue at about 5:30, as he stopped by during his rounds. He took the drain out of my wound. The entire hip/flank area on my left side is hugely swollen and is making me feel enormously fat and distended. I don't recall my corresponding flank being so swollen in March. It almost made me wonder if the drain should stay in a bit longer -- isn't there so much more fluid in there to drain out? But I guess Doctor knows best.

My pain was still at zero this morning, which is even more impressive considering my epidural is set at 8.5 mL/hr this time as opposed to the 12 mL/hr it was at for my right hip in March. So everything is still coming up roses after this second PAO.

With my pain so controlled and my arms so strong, my nurse and I took advantage of the opportunity to give me another sponge bath and change my sheets again. Wow, the hygiene! I will say, though, despite all the prophylactic sheet changing we are doing, my back and flanks are still hot and sticky and pressed into damp sweaty sheets a lot of the time, so I worry that the heat rash may make a reappearance.

Dr. Millis stopped by to remove part of my dressing as well -- the thick ace bandage wrapped around my entire midsection and left thigh. Once he cut that thing off I felt fantastically better. The bandage had been the source of a lot of itching and discomfort so far, and removing it made me far more comfortable. I still had the two bandages over the incisions on either side, but at least the thick itchy girdle covering it all was gone.

After all that activity, I was exhausted, and so I napped from 10 to 12:30, turning away PT's attempts to rouse me into activity in the late morning. I already find PT's in-bed exercises a bit silly, and I am certainly getting tired of the way everyone in the hospital seems to think it is OK to rouse me from my most peaceful slumber for whatever little test (or intern lecture) they have in mind. I thought I read somewhere that adequate sleep (and hydration) were the absolute best medicine?

When I awoke from my healing sleep, I had another headache. (So much for "absolute best medicine, I guess.) I don't usually get headaches, and I don't remember getting any during my hospital stay in March, but this time around I've been having low grade headaches for a lot of the time. Tylenol has only helped about 50% of the time.

I also had another new pain when I woke up from my nap -- my left hip. The hip pain that had been held a zero this entire time had suddenly broken through, and now my left hip ached at about a three or a four -- enough to cause discomfort while lying still, and to cause me to avoid moving the hip if possible.

Nonetheless, I (grudgingly) went through the in-bed exercises with PT when they came back in the afternoon, and I had to postpone my pity party even longer by spending the rest of the day logged on to work (!) taking care of various crises that had popped up in the office since Monday. I was supposed to be able to take time off from work for this surgery, but unfortunately the schedules in my current cases, and the intricacy of my involvement in them, has made my complete absence from work impossible. I can't say that stressing over the projects (and our firm's shoddy remote intranet connection) is helping my healing, but there is not much that can be done about it, so I'm doing what I can, given the circumstances.

Dr. Millis stopped by in the evening to see how I was doing. I told him about today's hip pain and my in-bed PT, he checked my incisions and sensation. He thought all was progressing just fine, but just as a bonus he ordered me to be transfused with a pint of the blood I'd donated autologously pre-surgery.

Four Months Post-Op

In my last entry six weeks ago, I was just starting to walk again; now I am getting close to 100% with walking. Right now, I'd say I'm at 80% of my pre-dysplasia-pain ability to walk, and probably 100% of my ability to walk just prior to surgery.

As I wrote six weeks ago, at first even going on a half mile walk was exhausting. My leg muscles were in various states of soreness for several weeks, and my cardiovascular endurance needed work after two and a half months of limited activity.

My gait stabilized soon after I began walking. Once I got steady on my feet, I tried to increase my walking bit by bit -- at first just starting with the basic walk to and from the subway on the way to work (a few blocks each way), then little lunch-hour walks that I stretched longer and longer.

Eventually I was able to walk from my apartment in the Financial District across the Brooklyn Bridge to DUMBO, one of my favorite walks and one I was very glad to get back to! My longest walk so far has been a five-mile walk through London the weekend before last -- but I did pay for that with exhaustion and soreness for the rest of the day afterwards, so I haven't repeated the feat since.

I have had pain as I've been increasing my walking. It is hard to explain -- a lot of the time it is clearly muscle pain -- in the quads, glutes, calves, hip muscles -- but once or twice it has felt disturbingly like the old pain: twinges when my hip hit a certain way; that old "blister" feeling. The twinging/shooting only happens when I am *really* spent, like after that 5 mile walk for example. In London, my hip felt great during the whole walk (I would have stopped immediately had it started hurting), but after I came home and had rested on the couch for a while, I got up and felt really stiff with twingy pain in the operated hip on each step. I don't know what that means.

At times I admit I've been concerned that the surgery "didn't work" and the pain was the same old pain I had pre-surgery. But unlike the pre-surgery pain, the twingy pain I have now goes away quickly. The old pain would linger for several days until I'd stayed off my hip long enough for it to fade away.

Other times when my hip has been tired I've sometimes felt an ache, sometimes with the ache reaching down in a stripe down the outside front of my thigh. Of course that stripe could be some inner quad muscle complaining. In fact, I am not sure that the twingy pain isn't muscle related, too. I just don't know. But no matter what the pain, it has usually not lasted more than a few hours and it has always been gone the next morning. I figure it is just all part of building up the strength and endurance of my hip, and to stick with the rule to ease up if it hurts.

Jaime (physical therapist) did give me some exercises and stretches during my May visit, which I was to do daily. I tried to do them every morning and evening but I definitely did not do them that often. The stretching was, and still is, the worst -- my hamstrings were tight anyway before the surgery and now they are just ridiculously tight. It is hard to tell if there is even any progress with the stretching, but I suppose it is good for me no matter what.

I have also ridden the exercise bike sometimes during the past weeks. I haven't swum and I haven't done any anaerobic exercise, but that is just because I am lazy. I have resolved to remedy those deficits in the coming weeks.

As it stands now, I am back to being able to get around in the city at least as well as I did just prior to surgery. I can walk to subways, around the office at work, to errands at lunch hour, in parks on weekends, etc., all without pain (for the most part). I can walk briskly and bustle up and down stairs at typical New York pace. The last couple of nagging range-of-motion problems (not being able to really bend freely over my operated leg to put on a sock, for example) have finally fallen away.

I still have the numb spot on the outside of my thigh, but it comes and goes. Sometimes it feels like it is almost totally gone and then sometimes it comes back a little bit. I guess it is possible there will be some sort of strangeness there for the rest of my life, but no matter; I rarely notice it and am never bothered by it when I do.

I went up to Boston yesterday to see Dr. Millis and the team. (My last visit was back in May, right before my last entry in here.) I got x-rays that looked (to me) exactly like the x-rays from six weeks ago. Screws straight, cracks filled in, etc. Dr. Millis was pleased with my gait, flexion and strength and all seems to be improving according to plan. Weakest links are the right hip flexor and hip abductor muscles. (They probably would have been stronger if I'd been more religious with my PT exercises, hmm?)

I asked Dr. Millis and Jessica (physical therapist) about adding back some activities. Sadly I'm not allowed to start up tennis again, but I'm now allowed to hit against a wall or against a ball machine, so that's a start. Jessica said I needed a month or so before I could start adding any impact on my hip, so "real" tennis is still on hold.

No horseback riding still because it is "too jarring." (I'm surprised they didn't also say "and you could fall off!")

Thankfully I am allowed to start back up with a personal trainer again, so that should help with my motivation to get back in the weight room. I've already set up my first session for this Friday.

Another bit of good news is that I don't have to go back up to Boston until my LPAO pre-op appointment in October! I will communicate with the physical therapists and Dr. Millis via email to give updates on how I'm doing, but basically I'm free to enjoy my summer and fall.

Speaking of LPAO, my left hip is still pain-free despite the increased activity. I haven't had even a twinge from it even during the longer walks. That doesn't affect my decision to put it on the chopping block in November, but it is definitely good news for the enjoyment of my summer.

Nine Weeks Post-Op -- Lose the Crutches!

Hallelujah! I am now officially allowed to wean myself off the crutches!

Today I went up to see Dr. Millis for my two-month post-op visit (although it really was 9 weeks post-op). He took another x-ray (I'll post it as soon as I get the image from the hospital) and I met with Jaime, the physical therapist, again.

I'm sad to say that it is hard for me to see any difference between today's x-ray and my last x-ray, or even the x-ray taken 5 days post-surgery. But the doctor was very pleased with all the new fuzzy white stuff I have apparently added in the last month, and he said that according to the x-ray there was no skeletal reason I couldn't walk right away.

Dr. Millis had me "try" walking without crutches, and both he and Jaime were impressed that I was walking so well my "first time" without crutches. I didn't tell them I'd already been using one crutch a little bit and even doing some minor walking. Hey, they didn't ask, OK? I would have told them if they'd asked.

Even though I've now gotten permission to walk, I can't just toss the crutches aside like a Christmas miracle; my hip and leg muscles, after two months of general atrophy, need a little time to get up off the couch, dust the Doritos crumbs off their bellies, and get in shape. I am allowed to walk as much as is comfortable, but Dr. Millis and Jaime warned that I should always have a crutch with me for when (not "if") my hip gets tired or sore.

Weaning off the crutches means sometimes I'll be walking, sometimes I'll be on one crutch, and sometimes I may even need to go back to two crutches for a day or so, depending on what my hip feels like. But as my joint strengthens I should find myself needing support less and less.

Jaime tested the range of motion in my right (operated) hip, as well as my current ability to use various muscles around the joint to lift my knee up, abduct my leg, and bring my leg out behind me. She also had me stand on my right (operated) leg and lift my left leg off the floor, which felt unstable and a bit scary. But apparently having 100% of my body weight on my right hip is not a problem at this point -- everything is healed enough that I'm not going to damage anything. What I really need to avoid is impact. Standing with 100% of weight on operated leg = OK; jumping up and down on operated leg = not OK.

Jaime then had me stand on my right (operated) leg, with a hand on the table for balance, and do all the same movements with my left leg: lift knee up, abduct the leg, bring leg out behind me. Initially I thought this was to strengthen the muscles around my left hip, but it turned out that having to support my entire body weight on my right leg while bracing myself against the movement of my left leg was the actual point of the exercise. And it was hard. The same muscles that are used for leg abduction are used to support the leg when standing on one foot, so I felt the burn on the outside of my right hip/thigh rather than in the muscles around my left hip. I am to practice these leg movements bilaterally, adding the resistance of a thera-band as my strength increases.

In addition to the leg movement exercises, Jaime also gave me some more stretches (hamstring and hip flexor) to add to the quad stretch I was already doing. She cleared me to begin doing crunches, increase my resistance on the exercise bike and swim laps in the pool (gently). She said I could try the elliptical machine when I felt my balance was good enough. I am not allowed to work with a personal trainer or do Pilates until after she's assessed my progress at my next visit.

So all of this is fantastic news. I have a lot of new movements to work on now, so I finally feel like progress can occur again! I am very excited to get started.

My next visit with Dr. Millis will be at 16 weeks (four months) post-op.

Off The Meds

It has now been five weeks since my surgery.

Today is the first day I have gone without any pain medication at all, and it feels fine so far. I had really been stepping down the dosage slowly prior to that, going by whatever pain level I felt. This morning my hip hardly hurt at all, so I decided to give the day a try without medication.

At this point I can sleep on my right (operated) side for long periods during the night. It feels a bit funny, but it is not painful. I sleep through the night with no problems. I am still clocking about nine or ten hours of sleep every night.

I can move my leg around quite a bit using the muscles near the hip; they are starting to recover nicely. All the exercises I got last week from the physical therapist are going very well; they are almost too easy. Only the hip abduction exercise is still difficult.

I have not been to the gym to do the exercise bike or the weight machines for my upper body -- I'm still trying to work out a membership with the YMCA up here in Connecticut. I really hope to get to the gym soon, as I feel that my sedentary lifestyle is affecting my mood as well as my body.

I am still working on getting my new 1/3 body weight weight-bearing allowance right, but the added weight isn't adding pain in my hip. Even when I've accidentally stepped on it with full weight it has not been painful, just obviously weak.

The numb spot on the side of my thigh is still there. It feels like it might be a little less numb, but it is hard to tell.

My incision has actually regressed and is not looking as good as it was in my last photo. One of the subdermal sutures has poked out at the top of the scar, creating an open wound, so I have to wear a Band-Aid over that part. The rest of the scar looks fine, but it is just redder and more noticeable than it was when I first took the Steri-strips off. I am not sure why. I am allowed to massage the scar with Vitamin E oil now, so maybe that will help.

So basically I am at the point in my recovery where I feel totally healthy, except I am on crutches. It is a very frustrating feeling. Progress was obvious before: less pain, more movement. Now everything just feels stagnant. Before I wasn't frustrated because it was very clear that I was injured and needed to rest and heal. Now it is easy to forget that all I have in those cracks is "fuzzy white stuff" and the bone needs time to heal together into a strong, solid unit again. And so it is easy to fall into the foul mood I have been in for the past three or four days.

I am not bored: I've got plenty to do, especially where work is concerned. But I don't want to do any of it any more. I am tired of this variety of sameness. I move from book to magazine to work task to TV show, I move from bed to armchair to table to couch, but it is all the same. It is all still and slow and seated. And I am really tired of sitting.

One Month Post-Op Visit

Today was my first post-operative visit with Dr. Millis, one month after my surgery. I had x-rays taken, met with the doctor to discuss my progress, and met with Physical Therapy to discuss my "assignments" for the coming month. My next visit to Boston will be in another month.

Dr. Millis said my x-rays looked great, and that "all the fuzzy white areas" were new bone growing to fill the cracks. Honestly, the whole x-ray looked like fuzzy white areas of varied brightness, so I didn't really see what he was seeing. I will post the new xrays when I get them. Dr. Millis also tested my range of motion in extension, flexion and rotation. In all, he was very pleased with my healing progress.

I got cleared to stop taking aspirin (which I'd been taking to avoid blood clots). I was instructed to continue to wean myself off painkillers as I have been doing. I got cleared to drive a car.

I am still on both crutches, only now I am allowed to put one third of my body weight on the right leg. So not exactly throw-down-your-crutches progress, but progress nonetheless. The problem is that one third of my body weight is a hard weight to gauge when you are thinking about crutching. It is one thing to put just the weight of your leg down. It is another thing to put half your body weight down as you do during when walking normally. But one third body weight? That is two thirds of the normal weight I would put on that leg if I were walking normally. But how does two-thirds normal weight feel? I have no idea. This will take practice.

The meeting with Physical Therapy outlined the range of movement I am permitted and the exercises I should practice in the coming month. I am now allowed full extension of my leg, which means I can lay on my stomach and on my back with no pillow under my leg. I was given a set of starter exercises and instructions to do them at least once a day. I was also given permission to walk in a pool and ride an upright stationary bicycle at no resistance for 10 minutes, building up to 30 minutes.

I was specifically instructed not to do any straight-leg lifts using the quadriceps because the head of one of the quadriceps muscles was detached during surgery (hence my inability to slide my foot forward the first week, remember that?) and still needed time to reconnect securely.

I did a whole set of the exercises with the Physical Therapist and they were pretty challenging despite their simplicity. It is an odd feeling to be starting something so basic from scratch. Before this, I had been moving my limbs around without a problem since birth. It is a bit rough to have to re-learn it all when the limbs are so much heavier and there is far less naptime.

After three hours in the hospital going from appointment to waiting room to appointment again, having Dr. Millis move my leg around to test motion, having the Physical Therapist move my leg around and lead me in a set of exercises -- my leg hurt more than ever. Muscle pain as well as bone pain this time. I foresee a painful period ahead of me as I begin to practice my new movements this coming month.

I am looking forward to moving more and bearing more weight on the leg, but I am also disappointed that the healing process is not moving faster. Looking back over the last month -- or even through this very entry -- the sentiment seems silly: I have progressed so much from being flat on my back in the hospital a month ago. But I have swung back to the way I felt the first weeks after the surgery, when I was unhappily surprised that recovery was so hard and painful. This time, I am unpleasantly surprised that recovery is taking so long. And just like last time, I should be surprised, nor should I have naively expected that somehow, for *me*, everything would be easy and quick. It has all been and will continue to be just as painful and gradual a process it is for every other normal human being. What a surprise.

Recovery Day 4 -- Exit Wounds

This morning I was up by 7:00am, which is pretty much the earliest I have woken up and stayed up since I got here. I was still furious about the back issue when I woke up, which is never a sign of rationality or an omen for a positive day. My lower back and flanks were still raw and itching terribly, damp and nubbly feeling when I scratched them; I could feel the angry rash forming. This discomfort was keeping me distracted and furious, like a six on my pain scale. I'd never intended the pain scale to apply to more than hip joint pain, I tell you that.

The nurses arrived and got me back in my CPM machine (which itself is not annoying or uncomfortable). I let them know that overnight my back had continued itching as if I'd been sitting sat naked in a poison ivy beach chair for three days. I'd tried shifting position, having sponge baths and salve creams applied but nothing seemed to ameliorate the horror. Only the IV-administered itching drugs could (temporarily) keep me from trying to claw off my own skin.

The other thing that bugs me about being so uncomfortably itchy is that I know I am moving my operated hip too much and putting it in non-optimal positions while trying desperately to talc, salve or sandblast my back and flanks. I can feel that I am causing my hip extra pain and I worry that I am delaying its healing because I am unable to focus on protecting the joint in the face of eliminating the raging discomfort on my skin.

Dr. Sankar came to see me at around 7:15am. I am just so so angry today; everything is making me furious. Before I was sad and pathetic and self-pitying, but now I'm just pretty much pissed off. Pissed off at how much I am itching and really pissed off at having to use the bed pan. I'm pretty sure I have already explained properly how f'ing pissed off I am about the bed pan.

At 8:45am the physical therapist came to help me practice getting from the bed to the recliner chair beside my bed. That was an ordeal which involved me supporting myself on the trapeze and swinging my good leg to the ground, followed by the physical therapist supporting my bad leg, following my lead to keep my bad leg in the correct alignment to the good leg all the way to the floor, so that eventually I would be sitting on the edge of the bed with both legs hanging off towards the floor. Or at least that was the idea.

What actually happened was that I swung my good leg to the ground but the the PT-held bad leg lagged behind and so was shifted from its usual angle and caused a painful bursting feeling within the joint. It honestly felt like a small water balloon had burst within my hip joint. I gasped and swore and instantly began crying hysterically. Partially because of the pain and surprise, partially because of the fear, and partially because of the (probably unwarranted amount of) hatred and blame I immediately directed towards the PT-tech who had ruined the whole maneuver (in my opinion). When I finally got settled into the chair, I refused to work further with the PT tech and refused to move from the chair until 11am. Which behavior is probably why I was appropriately sent to a children's hospital to have this surgery.

By 11 my tantrum had run its course and so I moved to a commode chair (basically a chair made of a high toilet seat with arms and legs with wheels), which could be rolled into the bathroom for me to shower in. The commode chair could also be rolled over the toilet to allow me to use the toilet like a normal person without the cursed bedpan scenario.

Taking a shower (even with the unwanted and what I considered unnecessary assistance of a nurse I did not particularly like) was quite a lovely experience. Getting back into bed from the commode chair was quite the opposite. The same logistical problem of launching a good leg onto the bed while balancing body weight on the trapeze and having a bad leg guided by a PT tech made me nervous and irritated. The PT's approach to this maneuver was not making logistical physical engineering sense to me, nor did she seem nearly strong or reliable enough to trust with lifting and guiding my injured leg in sync with my good leg. Again, I was not wrong, and she ruined it (in my opinion) because the approach she was suggesting required superhuman strength and accuracy from me and there is no way any patient could have done it. So that did make me like her any more at ALL.

So I had my horrible exit from the bed, my excellent shower and chair nap, a relatively productive 12 shuffly steps between the parallel bars and a horrible reentry to the bed. Getting into and out of bed were so scary and horrifying that it almost made everything they facilitated, including the shower, the steps, the chair, the non-bedpan urination, and the easy salving of my back, not worth the fear and panic of exiting and reentering the bed.

The whole experience made me ruthlessly dislike the physical therapist and her every appearance. Luckily the next person to arrive in my room was my friend Josh, and then Dr. Millis, who said I should be able to get out of here by Sunday noon.

And the doctor told me to drink my milk of magnesia. All everyone wants me to do here is drink milk of magnesia, drink miraplex, consider suppositories, blah blah blah. I haven't eaten a thing since Sunday night, so whatever is in my intestinal tract is not exactly a Hoover-dam type blockage. But clearly the whole team is freaking about my GI tract so I'm drinking my f'ing magnesia people, relax.

Friday night I got my second blood transfusion along with what turned out to be an accidentally overly high dose of oxycodone, so the entire experience was a end-of-Pinocchio-like a nightmare of blurring memories, alien-invasion-dreams, tubes of blood going into strange machines, stretched out time, slurred words and confusion. The back/flank rash was still horrible and itchy, and I kept waking up in what seemed like a different sci-fi dream. And I don't particularly like sci-fi.

Recovery Day 3 - My Back is Covered in Magma

Today my linens were changed again, but this time Dr. Millis himself was smart enough to be there for the actual changing -- I think he knew I'd throw a fit (because last time I was so nervous about the moving around and the sea-mammal-lifting scenario) and that my pride would probably cause me to suppress my panic in front of the head of the orthopedics department and therefore allow the deed to be done. Again I question why my linens needed to be changed less than 24 hours since their previous change. But anyway.

There were a lot of people around (male and female nurses); Dr. Millis was distracting me by talking about various unrelated things and giving me various meds while others were messing with the bed around and beneath me. So it all went far less terribly this time than my apprehensions had suggested. It also helped that my left elbow had healed enough that I could lift myself with its help from the trapeze, unlike last time.

My epidural was also taken out today, which was far less painful than I'd anticipated it would be. I suppose the epidural itself inside my back was quite small -- although I will say that it did affect how you could lean back in your seat, it had to be just right or it dug into your spine in quite the wrong way. A bigger coersion to removal was the tape around the epidural site and wires -- it itched crazily (a trend, you will see). But all went well and the epidural came out just fine and left almost no mark, as the hole in my spine had been so tiny. The epidural delivery system itself had been off since the morning anyway (meaning no medicine had been flowing through) as I was transitioning from that delivery system to my new oral meds.

The real, very distressing concern I had with removing the epidural had nothing to do with pain. Without an epidural (the wires for which had kept me in bed since the surgery), I no longer had any need for a urinary catheter, and without a catheter, I'd have get out of bed to use the toilet. (Sorry, I'm going to have to discuss catheter territory here...) So far, I hadn't had to get out of bed for anything, and, because I had a the luxury of a catheter, I'd kept myself very hydrated, drinking tons of water in addition to the IV fluids I was receiving on a 24 hour basis. I happened to be on the phone when the nurse who was sponge-bathing me mentioned something in passing about removing my catheter and began fussing around down in the catheter area. (Red flag just on its own.) Hold the phone, literally. I was not about to fall for that little she's-distracted-by-the-phone diversion trick. So I got off the phone and launched into a little whining parade, asking why I couldn't just keep the catheter until I learned to get out of bed safely. But I guess catheters are often the source of infection and so they should come out as soon as possible. Given the fear I'd already acquired about moving (even just enough to change my linens), and the amount of fluids I'd been drinking (consequence-free due to the catheter), I was actually prepared to accept the risk of a UTI (everyone likes cranberry juice, right?) over a constant (one-legged) Tigger-like bed to bathroom bouncing cycle. Alas, mine was the minority opinion and so the catheter too came out.

This meant that by Thursday afternoon I'd become almost totally wireless -- no leads, no epidural, no catheter, no IV-drips (although the IVs were still in place should they need to be hooked up to something or other).

This would all have been excellent progress except that Thursday also suffered from a timing problem. The day was supposed to have gone like this: get wireless, get a pint of my own blood transfused (for extra pizzazz!), get out of bed with PT's help, learn to use the rolling commode chair to get to the bathroom, rest on laurels. But instead, something got delayed with the blood and the schedule went more like this: get wireless, wait for the pint of own blood, inevitably have to go to the bathroom but no more catheter and no training in how to get out of bed (because PT wouldn't come until after I've gotten my pint of blood, of course, which makes perfect sense in Nonsense Land). For bathroom breaks I was forced instead to choose between pissing myself or using a bedpan, both choices I had planned to put off until at least my mid-80s.

The bedpan required me to hoist myself up on the trapeze, a nurse to position a plastic bowl-type thing beneath me, me to lower myself onto it and try to pee in it without missing and pissing all over my bed (which of course, could have been an option on its own, as you recall). Lots of people have to help set this bedpan scenario up for you and so you are not exactly left with any modesty while performing the task. It is mortifying and disgusting beyond belief, and honestly should be someone's episode of Fear Factor. Personally, I chose to add in the optional pre-bedpan temper tantrum (which does not lessen the bladder's needs) before succumbing to the bedpan option. I did, however, maintain what I thought was a shred of dignity by countenancing a complete, unabated, immature and utterly satisfying fury for the remainder of the day, and going on a water strike. All of which, I'm sure, showed them.

When you think of fury, you imagine, perhaps, Yosemite Sam's ruddy, seething face beginning to shake, or the way Acme characters' faces fill up red from the bottom until the very pate is reached and "TILT" begins to flash in their eyes. I am not going to say that in a similar manner my bedpan humiliation fury was physically manifested by the pulsing, hot, Habanero-like heat rash I was to suffer for the remainder of my hospital stay, but I'm not going to deny the metaphoric coincidence either.

As you may recall, during my feverish period described yesterday, my back would pour sweat and feel like an inferno, and I would stuff as many ice packs as possible back there to try to alleviate the situation. All that heat and pressure (despite the ice packs) eventually lead directly to a horrible, spreading, angry heat rash that inspired absolute insanity in me, removing my concern for hip pain, consideration of others, desire for food, drink, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and replacing it with a frantic desire to rip the skin off my back with any available shredding and/or rending type object(s). This frantic heat rash condition could be controlled slightly with various anti-itch medications, but would become a background tenet of my mood for the remainder of my stay.

So needless to say, Thursday was an angry day. Not only were my linens changed again in some sort of spasm of sadistic cleanliness, my back began to boil like a hot, itchy pool of magma, my catheter was removed before I knew how to get out of bed, and my dignity was stolen and beaten and ridiculed and tossed into a bedpan in front of male nurses.

On the plus side, I did get to have a shower.