Recovery: Day 4

Oh my gosh you guys, the funniest thing ever just happened. I got onto the iPad, went to the internet and guess what page popped up?

Ice cream truck tracker

Yup, you read that right, my 8 and 5 year old figured out how to use the almighty power of Google to find the ice cream man. Summer has got to be the best season ever.

I'm four days into recovery, and they've been a tough four days. I've cried a lot, been in a lot of pain, taken a lot of pain killers, and slept even more. This recovery has been so, so much harder then I ever could have anticipated.  Originally Mark was scheduled to go back to work tomorrow, but seeing as I still need help lifting my legs onto the couch I think it's safe to say that he's going to need to stay home a few more days.

I think that one of the toughest things for me about this is just how weak my leg is. I don't know if it's the severity of the torn labrum, or the released tendon, but I have almost no strength in that leg. Which is making me genuinely dependent on other people for everything.

Oh Mark, bless his soul, has become like the cleanliness police. So the other day he decides that it's mandatory that I take a shower. At that point my list of priorities looked like this: Valium, Norco, sleep. So this shower business was crazy. First, he has to get me undressed, which resulted in me almost falling no less than 3 times, because my right leg is currently 100% non weight bearing and I'm reliant on my crutches to keep me upright. So, I'm now de-clothed, and standing outside of the shower staring at it, trying to figure out just how in the hell I'm going to get in. And then Mark decides to just pick me up and put me in. I just want to point out that my husband is a bald man, and my hair goes halfway down my back, so washing hair isn't exactly his forte.  His attempt at washing this mop was like gently stroking a tiger, afraid that at any moment something might jump out and bite him, so to be as gentle possible. I'm not even sure the shampoo made it to my scalp.  At this point I completely ran out of energy and we had to reverse the getting in the shower process, this time with putting clean clothes on. After this entire experience, which may have taken a grand total of 7 whole minutes, I had no choice but to take a two hour nap. Tomorrow he says that I have to take another shower.

This has definitely been one of those 'it takes a village' situations. My parents took my kids from Wednesday-Sunday, and we're 100% willing to keep them longer, but I couldn't bear to be away from them for one more day. Especially Everett. He is just too young to understand what is going on, so while the big kids were sad and missed me, they were excited to shave special and fun time with their grandparents. Everett had no clue what was going on, just that he was away from his mom, dad & house, and he had a really tough time with that. My parents brought him back on Sunday afternoon, and he had fallen asleep on the way home, so after his nap Mark goes up and gets him, and Everett wouldn't even look at me. He was so mad at me for leaving him, and my heart broke into 1,000 pieces. It took him 45ish minutes to warm back up to me, and I spent the entire time fighting back tears. Eventually he remembered that I am in fact the best person in the entire world, and he loves me again.

So, where do we go from here? Thursday morning I have my post op appointment, and hopefully we are able to make a physical therapy plan, and get me back to mobility. My overall goal is to run the Shamrock'n half marathon in February, and I realize it's a lofty goal, but hey, if I shoot for the moon and miss I will still land in the stars. I know, it's cliche, but hey, if you don't have at least one good cliche what do you have?

Surgery.

The day of surgery I was scheduled to check into the hospital at 10am, for a surgery time of 12pm.   So, I started the day as usual, got up, got the kids ready for school, walked Reese to school and came home to a voicemail from the hospital asking me to come in sooner, because the doctor wants to start earlier. I panic, call all of my neighbors until one answers to come and stay with my boys until my mom could get there. And then we headed for the hospital.

When we get there the check in process went super smoothly, we check in and I'm almost immediately called back into the prep room.  We go through all of the standard get ready process and then my surgeon comes in to talk to us. At this point I knew I was either going in for open or closed FAI surgery, we just weren't sure which. Well, then my doctor dropped another bomb. Actually, it could be the FAI that we've been gearing up for, OR it could simple be a tendon that is too tight and needs to be released, OR, it could be some scary third thing that's a major, major surgery. His hope is that it's just the tendon, but he is ready to repair the labrum if it's torn worse than it looks, and should it be the third thing we pull out and find someone who specializes in such a delicate surgery. So, I go back into the OR not knowing what kind of surgery I'm going to have.

Waking up from anesthesia was ROUGH. I remember waking up and feeling like one of my kids was in danger, and that I had to get to them right away.  People were pushing me down, trying to get me to calm down, and when I figured out where I was I remember shaking from head to toe, shivering. I guess in order to keep the light field open in arthroscopic surgery they need to irrigate the area the entire time, and I had been in surgery for four hours, so I had literally been chilled to the bone. The next thing that hit me was the pain. I was warming up, but I was still shaking from pain. My doctor had ordered a nerve block before I woke up, but that didn't happen. So, they finally get me calmed down, get the anesthesiologist, and the ultrasound machine ready to locate the nerve to block when the anesthesiologist gets called away on an emergency. At this point I am laying in a hospital bed, sobbing in pain and waiting for an anesthesiologist. When he finally makes it back to my room the anesthesiologist decides that this would be the perfect opportunity to teach someone how to do a nerve block. You know, while I've already waited am extra 15 minutes for a missing anesthesiologist and am laying on a bed shaking and sobbing in pain sounds like a perfect teaching opportunity.

So I now have a nerve block, that can take up to 45 minutes to kick in, and a still in so much pain. The pain management team is talking about giving me more dilauded when my post op nurse tries to talk them out of it, saying 'I was just scoped.' and shouldn't need more pain meds.  I think it's fair to say that I was a hot mess post-op, especially at this point because I was still in so much pain, and i still had NO IDEA WHAT SURGERY I HAD JUST HAD.  I thought that maybe it was just me the post op nurse didn't like until I heard her tell the guy in the room next to me (who had just had spinal fusion surgery) that 'he came in with a pain level of 8, and he was at an 8 now, so that should be a tolerable level of pain for him.' And that's when I decided that she was an evil bitch who should probably be a prison warden, and not a nurse.

Mark and my dad are finally allowed back into the room with me, and that's when I learn what surgery I had. I had a deteriorated labrum that had to be completely reattached, and the over overage in my hip joint was shaved down, and I also had one of my tendons released because it was too tight. Overall the surgery took 4.5 hours, mad I spent 3.5 hours in recovery mad was able to go home that night. So, now I'm home, drugged to the high heavens and ready to get on the road to recovery.