Venturing Out on the Town

Tuesday's big adventure was going out to dinner at a local restaurant. At the time it was my longest excursion out of the house since I got home from the hospital a week and a half ago.

I was already in a bit more pain than usual before we went, but I thought the pain was more from muscle cramping from sitting in one position all day than from hip ache, so I took a Valium instead of an Oxycodone. Wrong choice. I was irritable, sleepy, uncomfortable in my chair, not very hungry and climbing the pain scale throughout the meal. What a terrible dinner date I was for my poor parents!

When I got home, I got a call from Dr. Millis. He wanted to check up on me at the two-week mark. Obviously he was catching me at a low point pain and mood-wise, but despite how awful I felt during the call, I tried to give him a broader picture of how I have been doing these past weeks and the progresses I have made.

The highlights of what he told me were:

-- if I am to undertake anything adventuresome (ahem, restaurant visit), I should prepare by taking extra pain medication beforehand (in this case one or two Oxycodone instead of one Valium) and not torture myself by going poorly protected, painkiller-wise;

-- he did not seem to be concerned about the amount of pain medication I am still needing (I was concerned because some of my PAO peers seem to reduce and even quit their pain medication so quickly, and I just don't think I can do it that fast, nor do I think I am being wimpy about my pain level);

-- I don't have to worry so much about overdoing the angle or the weight on the operated hip -- it will take more than such small things to do damage to the hip and its healing;

-- any grinding, shifting, popping, or clicking I may have felt are normal the first few weeks (I have felt none of those things.);

-- the dressing can come off any time now, the incision will be healed shut by now;

-- the numb spot will continue to recede.

Today I took the dressing off -- it is still hard to tell what the incision looks like because of the steri-strips. Mostly it looks like a 4.5" long mountain ridge curving down from where the iliac crest sticks out in front. Here is a photo; one of the steri-strips has peeled off already so you can see the actual incision there.

For orientation, the grey fabric is my pants, the top of the incision is where my hip bone would stick out really obviously if I were skinny like a supermodel, and the right side of the photo is the right side of my body. The yellowish tinges are from Betadine solution.

[Note, I've also added a post-surgery x-ray photo here, and going forward photos will be easily accessible in the Quick Links section at left.]

Tonight was another big adventure, attending a three-hour fund-raising event with my parents. Again I was already in a bit more pain than normal beforehand, this time because I'd stepped on the dog while swinging my bad leg off the couch -- the dog obviously jumped up and away, wrenching my leg as she moved. It hurt -- me physically and the dog emotionally.

This time I applied the lessons of Tuesday night and took two Oxycodone beforehand and had extra medication with me. (The fact that the event was a trivia competition and I was able to vigorously compete does prove my point that the Oxycodone does not make me foggy at all.) Although my team did not win, the night turned out well overall. My pain stayed very low until the last hour, when it started to increase and distract me. So clearly I can venture out a bit more, but as Dr. Millis suggested, I should be prepared with extra pain medication to avoid self-torture.

Two Weeks Post-Surgery: Movement

I am more mobile than last week in the sense that I am more confident on my crutches. Other than that there is not a significant amount of progress. I am in good shape for crutching -- prior to the surgery I did a lot of step-ups onto high platforms, squats, lat pulldowns, rows, triceps dips and other "crutch muscles" exercises, so I actually have not felt much difficulty crutching due to fatigue/weakness of any of the supporting muscles. (That said, I don't do much crutching other than around the house for necessary tasks only.) The real difficulty is with the muscles that were affected by the surgery in my right leg, as I describe below in the bit about the stairs.

I'm concerned sometimes that I accidentally put too much weight on the bad leg, or that I create too sharp an angle at the hip by leaning forward in a chair, for example. I left the hospital with instructions to keep the angle between my torso and thigh between 80 and 30 degrees (with 0 being flat out as when you stand up straight or lie down flat on the floor, and 90 being your knee brought up so your thigh is perpendicular to your body). So my concern is that I might accidentally push the hip a bit too far with weight-bearing or the angle, since I'm protected by the painkillers.

Or I might just fall on my face, like I did yesterday. I was waking up from a nap, and clearly not really fully awake or coordinated. As I got up from the couch and reached for my crutches, I lost my balance and fell forward. I caught myself mostly with other limbs, but I did land moderately hard on the floor with my right (op-side) knee, jarring my operated hip. It hurt right away (even through the painkillers) and of course I instantly panicked that I had done some sort of significant damage to my hip or hindered the recovery in some way. It feels OK today so maybe I am not made of porcelain. But lesson learned: wake up, THEN stand up.

I know I'm being a bit overly cautious, but I just really want to be very careful and treat my hip as properly as possible during this healing time, especially when it is so early and everything is so loosey-goosey in there; I feel like the slightest mistake (like clumsily falling) might cause some small setback or damage that would prevent the joint from healing as strongly and solidly as possible. I'm afraid that pushing oneself too hard and pushing the boundaries of healing too soon could create microscopic weaknesses in the healed joint that over time could cause pain, problems, and potentially more surgery. I want to heal this hip once, well, and for GOOD. (And then do the same thing to the other one.)

My current movement project is going down stairs -- as we know last week's breakthrough was sliding my right (op) foot forward using the hip flexor/upper quad when taking a step forward with my crutches. Going down steps is a slight variation on that, as I put the crutches on the lower step, place my right (op) foot on the lower step, then (with all my weight on the crutches) bring my left (non-op) foot down to the lower step where my crutches and other foot are. So the additional difficulty here is that rather than just sliding my right (op) foot forward, I also have to use muscles around my hip to support the entire weight of my right leg while the right foot is in mid-air over the lower step before I place it into position.

Previously I had either cheated by slithering my foot over the edge of the stair and down onto the lower stair (i.e. never losing contact with the ground) or having someone place my right foot on the lower stair with each step. But by now my hip flexor/upper quad muscles are strong enough for me to place my own foot on the stair below (sans slithering or assistance) for several steps in a row. This morning I made it down almost all of the 13 stairs down from the upstairs, so that was a pretty good achievement.

I still need help getting into and out of the shower (there is a high lip that I need help getting over with crutches, plus there are zero handholds to grab on to for support), but I can shower myself using my shower chair. Although a shower feels fantastic, the entire undressing/getting in/not falling off the shower chair/getting out/drying myself with all weight on left foot/redressing process is sometimes an exhausting ordeal, so the glee can be somewhat tempered.

I have been fine with using a normal toilet since I got home. I think this is due to my pre-surgery leg workouts -- my left leg has been doing quite well at lifting my entire body weight from various seated positions even when there is not really enough support for me to use my arms to assist.

Similarly I never got myself a leg-lifter to position my leg; I just grab it by the knee and move it around with my arms. To make small adjustments to the position of my lower leg I have been using an excellent trick I read in someone else's blog -- slip the non-operated side's foot under the ankle of the operated-side leg and use the good foot to adjust the position of the lower leg on the operated side.

I am perfectly comfortable sitting in an armchair with an ottoman for hours. I can sit in an armchair without an ottoman for a while as well, as long as I can slouch a bit. Dining room and kitchen table chairs are less comfortable, mostly because they involve eating (i.e. leaning over the table) and that causes greater-than-80-degree hip angle problems. I solve the angle problem by sitting on the edge of the chair and angling my thigh down towards the floor, with my foot under my chair. But as you can probably imagine, that is not all that comfortable for long periods of time either, so I prefer the armchair route.

The leg-under-the-chair solution is also helpful for getting up from armless chairs or other seating positions where there is not a lot of support nearby for using my arms to help me stand up. With my right leg under the chair and my right knee pointing 45 degrees towards the floor, I can lean forward to use my body weight to help me stand up using just my left leg, without creating an overly acute hip angle from leaning forward.

There has not been much progress in sleeping positions. As last week, I can sleep on my back (with two pillows under my right leg) or on my left side (with two pillows between my knees and one between my ankles) for long periods during the night. I can switch between these positions by myself, although it is not something I can do in a state of half-sleep, so I do still wake up several times per night to make these switches. Last night I must have been dreaming something topsy-turvy because I woke up in the midst of an attempt to turn on to my right (op) side to sleep. I did complete the turn, figuring I might as well try lying on the operated side, but that experiment lasted about one second, as it hurt immediately and not insignificantly.

Although I can't move all that much, my spirits are still high. I'm in a good mood most of the time, and I'm never bored. I have so much to read (books, magazines, newspapers, blogs) and so much to watch (Netflix! Hulu!) that the days pass quickly. I've also started to log back in to work this week, but so far I've just been responding to two weeks of emails and trying to get my inbox back in order.

Two Weeks Post-Surgery: Pain & Medication

My pain is generally well-managed but there is a lot of it still lurking below the painkiller block. When the pain does break through, it has usually moved to one or another of its favorite places to surface -- sometimes over the incision, sometimes on the outside of my hip, sometimes deep within the joint, sometimes at the top of my iliac crest (where I think there is a screw head), sometimes in the back of my hip joint (deep inside behind the bottom of my right buttock), sometimes shooting itself like a racing stripe down the outside of my thigh, knee and calf.

There is still a numb spot about the size of my hand on the outside of my thigh, right below where the greater trochanter of the femur sticks out to form the widest part of the hip. The numb spot is normal; Dr. Millis said they have to move a significant nerve aside when they are doing the surgery, and this causes some damage to the nerve that gradually repairs itself over a few months. But there will be a steadily receding numb spot there until the nerve has completely healed.

My incision is usually the least of my problems. It is not generally tender, but it itches sometimes under the dressing, and as I mentioned above, it does sometimes hurt. We changed the dressing two days ago, so I saw the scar (through the steri-strips, which means I didn't see much). Not much to report until I really see it when the dressing and the steri-strips come off. The dressing is set to come off this Thursday.

There does not seem to be much swelling at all in the hip area or the leg on my operated side. I am not even sure there was that much swelling in the hospital.

My current pain medication regimen is:

-- 1 Oxycodone every 5 hours during the day
-- 1 Oxycontin twice daily
-- 1 Valium at bedtime
-- 1 Valium kept at bedside if needed for pain during the night

Some PAO bloggers I have read have been on less medication (or less frequent dosing) by this point in their recoveries, so I'm not sure why I'm still needing such high or frequent amounts of pain medication. I have, on occasion of missing a dose or taking a dose too late, had breakthrough pain, and it is not at all tolerable -- about a 5 on my pain scale if I let it get too far. Since leaving the hospital I have stepped down to one Oxycodone every five hours instead of two every four hours, and have switched to taking Valium at nights instead of Oxycodone.

Unlike others, however, I don't find the painkillers make me feel mentally foggy in the slightest. Only Valium makes me a bit scatterbrained and sleepy, which is why I take it at nights now and leave the Oxys for the daytime. But on the current regimen I have been reading varied, mentally stimulating books and magazines, playing (and winning) fierce games of Trivial Pursuit and staying generally awake and alert all day, save an afternoon nap. So I'm in no rush to get off the pain killers for any philosophical or mental acuity reasons, I just find it interesting that others have weaned off them tolerably so much more quickly than I seem to be doing.

Of course, one must consider that my surgery took seven hours rather than the four and a half hours Dr. Millis had originally predicted, and my bones were, according to him, incredibly strong and difficult to cut. I have five screws rather than the usual number of three most often used in these operations. Also, I came out of surgery with an elbow injury on top of the hip situation (and then there was the heat rash!), so maybe my body's healing department has had a lot a lot of balls in the air and that is why my pain has been persisting longer than that of my PAO peers. Or maybe everyone is different in their healing and it is what it is.

Speaking of heat rash, I've been applying the prescription rash cream twice daily since I left the hospital. The dragonhide that formed after the fiery welts I had in the hospital has completely flaked off by now and the marks of the rash are reportedly looking much better and almost dissipated.

The itchy-red-spots problem (which apparently is a side-effect of the pain medications, although I have not read of similar reactions among any of my PAO peers) persists, but seems to have been lessening steadily. For that I try (usually unsuccessfully) not to scratch at the spots and I apply Gold Bond lotion twice daily. Mostly it feels like I have a mild but chronic case of chicken pox.

I am also still taking the Atarax pills (twice daily) that I was taking when I left the hospital for the itching/spots. I think I will reduce the Atarax as the pain medications are reduced.

I was never given Lovenox or even Coumadin at the hospital, just aspirin, so I keep taking that once daily to keep my blood thin and clot-free as I'm healing. I stopped wearing my TED stockings after a few days at home. Even in the hospital they weren't very tight and didn't seem to be doing anything that a pair of drug-store knee-highs couldn't do. Plus, no one told me I had to wear them when I got home.

First Week Home

I've been back at home for four days now. The routine is really one of keeping me comfortable, clean, and as pain-free as possible. I would not say I have been progressing in leaps and bounds.

The pain is variable. At times it is quite bad and I am unable to focus on anything else until the medication kicks in; at other times it is more manageable. Sometimes the variation seems to be related to movement (crutching around, showering, etc.) but sometimes not. I suppose that is how it is these first weeks when things are shifting and mending and moving about in there.

When I was first taught to crutch by the PT tech at the hospital, the instruction was to put all weight on the left (non-op-side) foot, move the crutches forward a foot or so, slide my right (op-side) foot forward (toes slightly up so as not to snag on the carpet) until it is even with the crutches, then lean almost all my body weight on the crutches (only bearing 1/6th of my body weight on my op leg -- basically the weight of the leg itself) and follow by bringing my non-op-side foot even with my op-side foot and the crutches.

At first I couldn't slide my op-side foot forward at all. The muscle just wasn't there. I would stare at the foot and try to THINK it forward but I just couldn't get any muscles to respond to slide it forward. I had to get the foot where it was going by leaning forward so the weight momentum would swing it forward to meet the crutches, or by creeping forward along the floor with the toes, or some other cheat.

But by now whatever hip flexor/quad muscle was not firing before is working to slide my right foot forward as I crutch. So that is progress! I can slide my op-side foot forward six inches across the floor. Trophy please!

Crutching is very tiring. Standing on one leg is also very tiring. Pretty much everything I do that is movement requires so much effort by every single part of my body except my right leg that I am exhausted after the smallest feats. A shower, a staircase, a switch of positions... all of it requires a rest period afterwards, and sometimes some Valium if the movement has caused muscle cramps or extra pain.

I can sleep on my left side for long periods (i.e. more than an hour = long) during the night and switch from lying on my back to lying on my left side on my own. It is neither easy nor comfortable to do so, but I can do it. There are times when sleeping on my left side is far more comfortable than sleeping on my back, but combining the words sleeping and comfortable is still an exercise in oxymoronism.

I have not made any progress at all with the itching, however. I must be reacting to one of the medications, but I just itch all the time. Not the same as the heat rash, but just like itching little red bumps everywhere. I am still taking Atarax (which I was taking in the hospital for the heat rash) so the itching is supposedly being controlled, but you could fool me.

Another strange thing I have noticed is wild temperature fluctuations. I swing from freezing cold to complete hot flashes in what seems like fifteen minute intervals. Makes dressing very difficult but I'm learning to love layers. I think this must also be some some sort of medicine reaction.

My dressing is beginning to peel off so I've got an email in to the doctor to find out when that can come off. It is pretty much deciding the timing itself at this point, but I don't want to just rip the rest of it off without his permission.

Other than that, no news from the home front.

Transitioning Hospital to Home

Saturday involved more physical therapy, now including walking with crutches, as well as in the parallel bars. All of it is still very very tiny amounts of movement -- 3 stairs here, 12 crutch-steps there. Nothing like what I'm going to have to be prepared to do when I go home. They train you "how" to do the motions but they don't work on strengthening you to handle how much your muscles are going to have to be doing by the time you are moving. It is all well and good to practice 3 stairs, but my house has 13 to get from first to second floor. But I suppose form is most important; I'll have plenty of "on the job" training as soon as I get out of here. I was not sent home with any PT "prescription" or any discussion of types of exercises I should focus on at all.

Today (Sunday) I go home around noon, after having spent seven days in the hospital (including the day of surgery). By now my pain is pretty well managed with oxycontin and oxycodone. My PT is progressive in the sense that I can now walk more steps and even handle some stairs, up and down. But the heat rash itching has not gotten any better despite the creams and powders.

Last night I managed to fall asleep on my left (non-operated) side for about an hour, but had to be rescued like a beached whale when it was time to be rolled over onto my back again. Of course when I woke up I had that same strange "where am I" feeling I always have had in the hospital, and the concern that I'd woken up in a dream (rather than FROM a dream), if you know what I mean. That has happened to me more than once while here at the hospital, like there must be some other alternate reality that I am missing just before I wake, and in that other reality I don't wake up every day in a gown on a gurney scratching my back raw. Also -- and this must be the drugs -- every time I wake up I feel like I'm in a different room. Very similar to my other hospital room, but a different room nonetheless.

The doctors came by early this morning on rounds (as usual) and I was completely out of it and falling asleep in the middle of conversations (as usual). That is so very embarrassing. Patients are never nodding off like junkies in the middle of coversations with Dr. Gregory House, for example. Unless it is important for their differential diagnoses.

I am ready to go home. I don't think this hospital bed has much more to offer me (other than the trapeze, which I will sorely miss).

All the paperwork has been done for my release; Dr. Millis himself wheeled me to the door and wished me well (I'll see him in three weeks for follow up anyway) and was very sweet about everything. Some of the nurses seemed genuinely sad to see me go, and say that they have requested me as a patient for next time (which I have to think is a lie, can you even do that?)

My mother and I got on the road about 1pm and stopped for a coffee/restroom break at McDonald's on the way. It was my first time in public on the crutches and it is just a joke how slowly I move on crutches. People must think I'm kidding -- I look healthy and strong enough, and yet I'm heaving like a cast Clydesdale and I'm moving about 6 inches a minute. I couldn't make eye-contact with anyone at the McDonalds because I have to study the ground for each step and think so hard about my muscles, so I don't know if anyone was staring or not, but this one poor kid did have to hold the door for me for like 5 minutes as I snailed my way through. Bet he regretted that one.

The drive home was about three and a half hours; my leg kept jiggling or bouncing with the car's movements, plus I missed a painkiller while I was asleep during the journey, so needless to say I was in a world of hurt and exhaustion when we pulled in the driveway. It was all I could do to make it up the back steps to the den and pass out on the couch. After a while I had mustered enough strength to make it all the way upstairs to my room to sleep again.

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.