The idea of surgery always makes me anxious of course. This is the second time in a year that I’ll need to be cut open for some reason, but total hip replacement is a bigger deal than just having my gallbladder taken out, so I want to be sure I’m fully prepared. I’ve read the doctor’s website over and over, but I wanted to hear stories of real people’s experiences so I know what to really expect. I also want some opinions on certain things I’m most concerned about at the moment.
How far ahead should I plan this thing? I could probably do it right away, if the surgeon were available, but there’s the not so minor issue of being out of work for a month that I want to be prepared for. Counting short-term disability payments, I won’t have enough PTO to cover my salary 100% unless I wait and do this sometime in September. So, should I call up my orthopaedic surgeon and say “pencil me in for Labor Day!”?
Should I have my husband move our bed to the first floor of our house? I think this would be dumb, actually, but just how limited will my mobility be? I should be able to get up & down a flight of stairs with some help, right? My sister-in-law (who lives with us) just had spinal fusion surgery and was able to get around by herself the day she came home from the hospital (she mostly stayed in bed, though). So I expect we won’t have to rearrange much. Should I have my computer moved upstairs by the bed? My SIL spent some time before her surgery setting up a “desk” beside her bed so she could get online while laying down… this seems like a good idea, but if I’ll be able to sit at my desk (which is on the first floor) is it worth the trouble?
I guess those are my biggest concerns at the moment. Please share stories and/or advice of your own experiences.
My mother-in-law, who was also a good friend, had a hip replacement done about 15 years ago. She had lots of risk factors, overweight, bad heart, many others. Her hip was very bad and she was in constant pain. She was on her feet and ready dance about 3 weeks after the surgery. She was getting around OK within a few days, but complete recovery was very fast. I was absolutely amazed. She has since passed away, but it had nothing to do w/ her hip surgery.
I had it done in 2000 at the tender age of 40. I dress out at 120, so it was easier for me than a large person. I came home on crutches and was on a cane in two weeks. I would recommend moving the bed to the first floor. Negotiating stairs with crutches would be rough, and if you fell down them you’d have to have the hip redone. Herewith, Mrs. Plant who might remember better than I.
Mr. Plant remembers correctly. The surgery went smoothly but there was quite a bit of pain the first day. He had a morphine thingy that he could control with a button every 20 minutes. After that, he just focussed on getting the heck out of dodge. He worked hard at his therapy while in hospital, then had a visiting nurse at home. They would not release him until friends of ours built handrails so he could get up the stairs (4 of them) to get into the house. He did it on crutches.
I agree that you should either sleep downstairs or plan to stay upstairs for a while. If we had had stairs in our house I wouldn’t let him use them.
If you have pets, you might want to think about crating them for a day or two, unless they are well-behaved and not likely to jump on you.
I guess that’s about it. Best of luck to you. Keep that computer close.
Mrs. Plant
I don’t remember it hurting that much; I laid on the morphine drip the second night and didn’t get any. I didn’t know it until the next morning when the nurse told me.
I was more frightened than I’ve ever been waiting to go into surgery.
Regards,
CP
My mother-in-law had hip replacement surgery a couple of years ago. She was in the hospital for about a week after the procedure, and spent a couple of weeks in a convalescent home, mostly because the doctors were afraid that she’d try to walk if she recovered at home. She was in her early 70s, but quite active, so they wanted the cement that holds the thingies in place to cure completely. She was confined to a wheel chair for a couple of weeks, and then had to use a walker for a while. Today, she has no problem walking unaided, and still plays tennis once in a while. She’s 76 now and still is quite active.
She also had TKR (Total Knee Replacement) a few years before that, and was up and about within a couple of days (to the dismay of her doctors!). It was about 3 months of recovery at home before she was 100% mobile.
I just had a total knee replacement in February, and we had group rehab sessions both at the hospital and at the therapy office afterwards which included hip patients, so I could watch the hip patients’ recovery as well as the knee folks.
You definitely won’t be able to climb a full flight of stairs when you first get home from the hospital. These days they prefer that you not use crutches unless you are very, very experienced on them (I was because I had been on them for months after foot surgery a few years ago and could prove I was stable on them); you’ll almost definitely end up with a walker at first, and then graduate to a cane. Stairs and walkers don’t mix well.
You will probably find that sitting upright is uncomfortable for longer than you think it should. So you might wait to see what your doctors/therapist/comfort level suggests is the best position for you to be in at the computer at first and then arrange things at home. You’ll have several days in the hospital to figure all that stuff out.
Be prepared to spend several weeks in physical therapy after your surgery – I know our post-hospital program is three times a week for six weeks, and even then you have to meet certain goals to be discharged. And be prepared to start therapy almost the moment you come out of the operating room; the hospital where I had my surgery done has a joint/spinal floor, and they start PT within 12 hours after surgery. (Yeah, it’s not fun!) But this is a case where you really do get out of what you put into it.
And the first two weeks WILL be painful; there’s no way around it, even with medications. Most helpful hint of all: Make sure to get your medication schedule set up so that you take your meds 1/2 hour to 1 hour BEFORE your therapy sessions! But the pain decreases rapidly after the first couple of weeks, and regaining mobility is a wonderful thing!
We also had a bunch of volunteers helping with the PT sessions while in the hospital who are all folks who’ve had knee or hip replacement, and they unanimously agreed that for hip replacements, it’s normally about a full year before you reach the point where you forget you’ve had it done and move completely normally. So appreciate that it will take time to get to where you’d like to be in terms of normal movement; it doesn’t happen overnight.
You should absolutely look into whether you are a candidate for something called “hip resurfacing” – or the Birmingham procedure. The hip is left in place, and you are likely back on your feet the same day. I know a couple of people who’ve had it and they are nuts for it. As of a year ago, there were only 3 or 4 surgeons in the US trained to do it, and one is in Madison.
I actually did look that up awhile ago and plan on finding out what my surgeon’s opinion is, based on my situation. My arthritis is pretty advanced so I’m not sure if the bone is in good enough condition to do this. The last time I saw the doctor, they took a new x-ray and looked at it and said “that looks like it hurts.” Well, duh! So far I’ve been getting by on cortisone injections in my hip (the second shot that I just got in January is starting to wear off now, but I spend more moments sans pain than I did before I got it).
I’m only around 125 lbs right now or less even (I lost a bit recently from a thyroid malfunction… turns out I have Graves’ Disease on top of everything!). I’m only 34 years old… it’s kindof crazy that all this stuff is happening to me now
I guess I’ll talk to my husband about moving our bed downstairs. One possibility might be to just take our mattress and move it onto our sofabed. It’ll be a bit of a chore since it’s a Tempurpedic mattress, which are a pain in the ass to move. I was hesitant to do that at first since we’ve only got 1/2 a bath on the first floor, but by the time they let me actually take a shower I’ll probably be able to move back upstairs anyway.
I think we’ve got some creative rearranging to do! Thanks for the advice everyone!
First of all, make sure there’s no increased anesthetic risk from the Graves disease. If there is, I’d make sure that’s well under control.
I know someone who got hip replacement who did everything right - did excercises before the procedure, and everything recommended after. He was good as new within 3 weeks.
Then there’s my Dad. He hated doctors and hospitals so put it off for years and years. His hip went from a mild life-long problem to severe arthritis when he was in his sixties. Still, he could get around with a cane then a walker to he put it off. He finally had one hip done when he was 85. By then his heart was failing and he had suffered severe pneumonia. The operation went OK, but he got infected which prevented him from doing post-op rehab for a few weeks. But even after that he resisted doing the excercises advised by the doctor. He put so much weight on his good hip that he shattered it, and was too ill to undergo anesthesia to get that one fixed. He was never comfortable again.
Moral of the story - get them early and do the rehab and “prehab”
Oooh…I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you will almost certainly need to get a second (possibly third) hip replacement in the future. A total joint replacement lasts 10-15 years, typically. Obviously other factors influence if it can last longer or not, such as how good/bad the existing joints are, amount of physical activity, amount of quality of PT, brand/material the replacement is made out of, etc…
Upon perusing the doctor’s site, he is touting a new type of implant designed to last much longer, but seeing as it’s only been used for approx. 7 years, the jury is still out on that, but hopefully it can do what it advertises.
My Mom had her first hip replacement at 84. They threw her out of the hospital after two days and out of the extended care facility after 13 days. At the end of three weeks, at a periodic checkup, she asked the doctor if she had to continue using a walker and he told her that if she did not want to mess with it, she did not have to. Everyone is different, of course, but despite being overweight, she had continued gardening and even mowing her lawn and brushing snow off the driveway (when it was not too deep) and continued to swim right up until her first replacement. All the medical folks were surprised at the speed of her recovery at her age.
(She has since fallen and broken her other hip, but she had some other issues that contributed to that.)
Either move the bed or set up a temporary. You do not want to mess around on stairs in the first few weeks. (You probably also do not want a matress on the floor. Having that elevation for sitting and standing is a good thing.)
