Hip Surgery

 Wow I am way overdue on an update on my hip! It has been a crazy month, that is for sure! My husband and I moved into our new fixer upper house here in Cincinnati. It is not our first home we have owned, but it is our first fixer upper! It has been so much fun to work on the house, but also extremely time consuming! Then my brother moved in with us! I am so excited to have him with us and get to spend so much time together! We haven’t lived together, or even in the same city, for about 8 years so I am beyond thrilled he is here! I also started my summer semester for grad school. I am taking a 5-week intensive neuroscience class, so that has been tons of work on top of my other two classes! All that to say that I have been incredibly busy since my hip surgery!

The surgery itself went extremely well! It was done at a Children’s hospital and they were just exceptional! It was a relatively quick procedure, about 2.5 hours, and they did not find anything that they did not expect to find. They were so accommodating for my service dog Reilly as well!

The surgeon did not end up needing to remove any bone from my femur or pelvis bone, which is wonderful. He did not expect to need to, but we were not 100% sure until he opened me up. If he would have had to take of bone it would have been a longer and harder recovery. He did have to anchor down the cartilage, but we expected that. The cartilage was torn away from the bone, so he basically pinned it down. In addition to anchoring the cartilage he trimmed off the dead pieces of the cartilage. When a tear happens the edges of the cartilage get ragged and began to die. Overall it was a very straightforward surgery and the doctor was very pleased with how it went!

I woke up in recovery and got to my room with no issues. The pain was very minimal and I was feeling pretty good! My hip was more sore and stiff than painful. I did not take any of the strong pain medications that they offered me. I was instructed to take muscle relaxers for 5 days after the surgery and Tylenol for a week. I did this as instructed, but I did not take anything stronger than that! It was a huge relief to not be in a significant amount of pain.

I, unfortunately, have to be on crutches. Even though there is no pain the surgeon wants to give the joint capsule a chance to heal. He had to open the join capsule, which is a sack that contains all of the cartilage and fluids that make up the hip joint, so there is always a chance that this capsule could become damaged if you do not let it heal for an adequate amount of time. I thought it would be two weeks that I would have to be on crutches, but it turns out it will be almost 6 weeks. There was a slight miscommunication with the surgeon’s office regarding the amount of time I would be on crutches, so I was disappointed by that. I still have another 1.5 weeks left on crutches and I am so ready to be done with them!!!! I am looking forward to the day that I can be rid of them for good! I was on them for about 3 months about 6 years ago, so it was very much like riding a bike in the sense that I got back in the swing of using them very quickly.

I go back to the orthopedic surgeon next Friday, so he will do an evaluation then and hopefully clear me to wean off the crutches and start physical therapy back up. I will let you all know how that appointment goes and will be updating about another surgery I have coming up as well!

I leave you with an adorable photo of my service dog Reilly and I in recovery after the surgery