Grrrrrrr ….
Later today I shall be completing my original course of meds following my hip replacement operation in mid-July. Since emerging from hospital three days after going under the knife I have been wearing compression socks (designed to prevent deep vein thrombosis issues) most of the time and consuming a mix of painkillers (Paracetamol and Ibuprofen) plus Omeprazole tablets – the latter to counteract the side effects of taking so many painkillers – four times per day and then also self-administering a syringe of Dalteparin into my stomach after finishing my evening meal.
Upon being sent out into the wide and wonderful world I was armed with a pamphlet on how to proceed generally and the phone number of a hospital (daytime office hours) helpline, the second of which has been most useful in fielding my several phone calls seeking advice prompted by ignorance as to what I should be doing and how over the past four plus weeks.
From tomorrow, therefore, I shall be proceeding without painkillers at all – save when and if I get pain that I feel is discomforting to the point where I feel I actually need relief. (Up until now, as prescribed, I have been taking them like Smarties whether I needed them or not).
To be honest with you, I am disappointed with the rate of my recovery thus far.
I say that albeit that to a degree this conceit is due to my totally-natural and continuing delusion that, contrary to all evidence, I am super-human. My attitude to illness or injury has always been that – if say the average recovery time from something is expected to be three weeks – I will be restored in a fortnight at worst.
As mentioned previously, for family and social reasons I was determined to be walking with the aid of just a single stick within a week. This I achieved. It led to my assumption that by now I would be walking unaided and moving as freely as I did before I had a hip problem, if not even better.
In fact, as others had warned me would be the case, recoveries from operations are rarely out-and-out plain sailing. Every human being is different and therefore it comes with the territory that we all react at different rates to specific traumas inflicted upon our bodies and/or the treatments, potions and physio exercises designed to restore our normality.
In my case with this hip, I don’t feel I’ve made the progress I would have wished. I have to confess that haven’t done my daily exercises with quite the diligence I should. Then again, by now I would have expected to be in the middle of a course of physio appointments and I won’t be beginning those until 22nd August and only then because I rang up my GP and – on his advice – badgered the hospital and then my local physio centre who between them had contrived to lose my details and/or failed to pass them from one to the other.
Received opinion has it that the average ‘hipper’ is normally advised they can ‘return to work’ six weeks after their operation (mind you, this is slightly ironic as most people are beyond the age of retirement before they have their operations).
As it happens – with my ‘fifth week’ milestone coming up on Friday – I remain at the stage where walking normally is best achieved by me using a stick. Without one I still have to resort to shuffling forward like a bow-legged sailor staggering along the deck of a ship in a Force 8 gale. It’s neither a pretty nor edifying sight, still less an efficient or easy means of getting about.
The debilitating aspect is that, after the best part of three years’ permanent vaguely nagging to acute discomfort from having osteoarthritis of the right hip in the first place, and now having had a hip replacement operation to deal with the issue (and hopefully allow me to regain life as it was before I had the first symptoms) I am still unable to move as freely as I was used to and/or without pain.
They say time is a great healer. I don’t doubt it. But please grant me a little bit of leeway to feel frustrated that I haven’t been able to make swifter progress than this!
