The Truth: All of It

Not mine, but similar, I think. Source: wikimedia

I sit here typing getting ready to leave the confines and comforts of the Middletown Nursing and Rehability Center in a very few hours.  I have been here for nearly three weeks (21 Days today).  I had a complete anterior hip replacement at St. John’s Hospital in Anderson, Indiana.  The surgery was done by Dr. Graybill from the joint center just at the edge of Anderson.  I won’t say it was painless, but I watched Dad go through a usual posterior hip replacement and rehab and I would choose this one any day.

From what I understand, the main difference between an anterior and posterior hip replacement deals with the severing of the muscles.  In a  posterior replacement, there are several muscles in the backside that are severed, sutured, and then must heal before walking becomes good.  In my case, one small muscle in the front was cut and sutured.  The quad muscles are stretched and pulled apart to allow access to the bones and joint.  The rest, I believe, is fairly much the same.  The difference is that I was feeling better four hours after surgery than I did before the surgery.  This was, mostly, because I had no cartilage left in that joint and pain was constant at about a 5-6 of 10 going to an 8 or 9 many times when I walked.  My range of motion was also much worse before.

Now, I can bend, rotate, move, walk, and sleep better.  Sounds all good and I did say “All” of the truth.  Surgery is never nice.  Even feeling better, I had several bad nights, so much pain and tenderness in my quads that I could have cried a lot, and rehab was, well, rehab.  Walking,  learning to balance, breaking old limping habits was/is tough.  Even more to the point, now, going home, I am faced with continuing to do rehab on my own with a weekly progress visit to the center to keep me strong and going in the right direction.  Hard, yep.  Impossible? Nope, just really hard.

This center has been wonderful to me.  I have made many new friends and many more connections.  I have been able to watch the lives of staff and residents, both temporary and permanent.  I have many stories to share and many things to bring home to my own life.  I won’t say anyone disappointed me, staff, friends, family, or otherwise.  I go home with more than I entered with.  I can’t complain about that much.  In fact, it’s rather nice.

Problems, otherwise?  Well, of course.  My second or third day here, I managed to get something in my laptop and when I closed the lid, I cracked the liquid screen.  It’s useable except for about half of the top left 6th of the screen.  Then, somehow, my profile login became corrupted.  I spent a full day restoring the laptop back to the factory defaults, losing all data in the process. I decided to simply run with the minimum information, concentrating on my browser and what it could allow me.  That setup gave me Netflix, Hulu. and Amazon Prime movies.  I was now set to rest and rehab well.  I also had my kindle and 2 regular books (just in case).  Facebook has kept me very busy and I have enjoyed all my “Words with Friends” games.  I do some online poker (free) and chess.  I have never been bored for more than a few minutes when my computer first crashed.

Now, it’s homeward bound.  I can’t say I am unhappy to be leaving, but it is difficult to go from what has become a fast-formed family.  On the other hand, my home computer is about 16 times faster than this one…you do the math.

Thanks for sticking with me.  I can’t wait to get fully back to normal, blogging and reading posts.  I simply have not felt good enough before now to do so and had to be careful not to talk much about the house being empty while I was online.  You are all wonderful and I am so glad to finally get to share it all.

Namaste,

Scott