Week 3 & 4

Week 3 and 4 out of Hospital – Initial paragraph isn’t suitable for the squeamish.

Sorry for the lack of blogging – a little something known as Christmas and New Year kind of got in the way. Thankfully my self-ministered, anti-DVT injections have finally ceased and contrary to my early belief, I was still no pro towards the end. In fact, three of my last six injections somehow went wrong and I managed to get the needle stuck so I still had lots of bruised dots on my belly until Boxing Day. Four days before Christmas, I also had a bad encounter with my ‘dissolvable’ stitches. Whilst massaging my scar with bio-oil, what I thought was just a scab at the top of the wound, began to unravel and a thread appeared. I tugged it a couple of times to see if there was any movement and nothing happened and it wasn’t painful. Now, not only did I want to cut the thread to deter fiddling with it, but my thinking was that if I carefully cut the thread, my skin would just grow over the stitches and they would dissolve. So that’s what I did. However, I think I made it worse because I would tug at my skin to try and get a good look at what I had done, so when I woke the next day and looked (tugging once again), there was a teeny tiny amount of blood and puss. We were back in Reigate with Andy’s family, so luckily Eli was on hand to rescue the situation. The next step involved TCP, tweezers and a final waterproof dressing from the hospital allowance. Eli believed I shouldn’t have cut the thread and instead pulled it out (or sought assistance in doing so), so if there’s a next time, I will bear that in mind. I was having hydro on Christmas Eve so I planned to leave the dressing on until then. For the next three days I was petrified that I had caused an infection but luckily, when the dressing was removed, this is how it looked:

The top of the wound  (bottom of the pic as I took it) is in line with your average trouser/legging waist band, so I’m afraid to say, it’s a little red and scabbed again since taking this picture. It doesn’t hurt and I’m sure it will go down so if it worsens then I’ll seek help.

Before driving home for Christmas I had my first land-based physio since discharge and I was in desperate need. The outside of my thigh (IT band) was extremely sore and tight (even though I still had no feeling there, it was painful and causing knee pain), and my entire back was just agony. My back is quite lordotic and years of hockey have caused havoc so it wasn’t too surprising; especially having to rely a lot on my upper body while I’m on crutches. So I had some soft tissue and trigger point manipulation which helped massively. This will be a weekly occurrence after Christmas as the pain soon returns a few days after treatment.

Without a doubt, the most inconvenient and tiresome effect of this surgery has been sleep deprivation. I’m only really taking the morphine pills before bed to allow the potential for a good night’s sleep, but four weeks after surgery, I thought it would be time to wind down on the pill-popping. 15mg to 10mg was fine while in my own bed in Kingston, but the change of bed when we went to Andy’s house was hard to adjust to. Increasing back up to 15mg didn’t make a difference and with only having disturbed sleep of 5-6 hours (when in Kingston I would have 11), I was forced to make an adult decision… sod the pills and crack on with the alcohol consumption. It was Christmas Eve after all! The exact words relating to morphine and alcohol intake are: High risk of death. Don’t worry; I’m not an avid gambler. It was virtually 24 hours since my last morphine dose and with a little of Andy’s family’s encouragement I had my first sip of a vodka concoction. I didn’t feel entirely myself shall we say, so after half a glass, I left it there for the evening. I can confirm that my actions were probably not my cleverest and I did indeed have my worst night’s sleep ever. I found myself on some Father Christmas website watching where in the world he and his reindeers were. (If you suffered with insomnia on Christmas Eve, you would have done the same I bet). Having said that, my first official ‘bad’ day was Christmas Eve, so another possible reason I was wide awake could arguably been due to stress. I was getting upset during and after hydro that one of my exercises (hip extension) wasn’t getting easier, and moaning to myself that I would have a rubbish Christmas. Don’t ask me why it would have affected it. I was just over-emotional as I was just generally fed up and inpatient with my progress.

In actual fact, it was probably the best Christmas I’ve had. I stayed off medication and got merry on wine and champagne. We had a house-full of people consisting of three generations, the food was immense and we played loads of games. The alcohol was a great pain reliever for the most part, but I did do something stupid whilst not able to sleep on Christmas Eve. Prior to discharge, I was told not to lie on my front or on my operated side until at least week six. Now, if you’re struggling to sleep, it’s fairly normal to roll around and try a different position. Having only a choice of two was proving difficult so I thought I would try lying on my right with my knees bent… I allowed my legs to drop to the right slowly, and it felt fine. I let them drop even more, and still nothing. As they neared the bed, I shifted my left hip up and onto my right hip; so I wasn’t rotating my leg at the joint. Everything felt ok for about 30 seconds and then a surge of pain prompted me to lie flat on my back again. The pain didn’t subside. A few hours later and I was still very much in a lot of pain. It was a horrible vicious circle as no sleep equals more stress and more stress equals no sleep. You throw pain into that equation and you don’t even want to know what it equals. Either sheer tiredness worked it’s magic, or the fact that a sleep deprived post-surgery online forum recommended raising my head with more pillows did the trick as soon after 5.30am I fell asleep. I was in a lot of pain for the next four days, but this coincided with my alcohol-over-medicine mentality so it’s hard to know if I did any damage or was just lacking proper pain relief. I’m pleased to report that I’m now off the alcohol (minus two sips of champers on New Year’s Eve), back on the meds, and using two pillows, and have returned to sleeping for 11 hours. I am still very apprehensive about decreasing the morphine again, but I’ll wait and make a decision after my check-up.

My six week check-up with Banksey is next Friday so I’m looking forward to receiving some reassurance that everything is alright. I will have some X-rays taken to see if it’s healing properly (and hopefully not bent my screws) so that will be a relief. My biggest concern is how hard I find my hip extension exercise (standing tall and extending my leg behind me). The sciatica isn’t as bad, but I still can’t push my leg behind without experiencing a lot of pain. I’ve seen no improvements whatsoever and even in the hydro pool it’s tough and painful. All the other exercises have progressively got easier: I can lie on my back and flex my hip unaided (lift my leg up through bending at the knee whilst keeping my foot down); I can abduct and adduct my leg whilst lying in bed (open my leg out to the side and back); and I can sit/lie/sleep comfortably either on my back or on my left now with no pain and no pillow between my legs. – I completely believe that my progress is thanks to hydrotherapy so don’t dither over whether to have it post-surgery. As mentioned previously, minor concerns of mine are that I’ve damaged the bone healing process after laying on my right, and my incision healing process was affected with slight fiddling. - Two regrettable incidences that I know not to do second time around.

Natalia and I have been conversing over the holidays and I’m pleased that she’s doing well. She has also had a couple of incidences which is another reason why I haven’t panicked too much. It’s so great to have someone there to talk to about hip-related issues and find out if you’re recovery is on track. Obviously people recover at different rates, but it’s still great to gauge.

A month back, I thought New Year’s would be below average too, but once again I was wrong. Andy’s pal Matt and his girlfriend Helen offered to come over and we had the best time. Andy and Helen cooked up a storm in the kitchen and we had an amazing three-course meal consisting of seared scallops, pancetta, pea and mint purée and quails eggs for starter, mediterranean chicken en croȗte for main, and lemon, lime and passion fruit pavlova for dessert. Amazing wouldn't you say?

It was the perfect way to complete an amazing 2012! - Despite all the hip pain prior to and post-surgery, I would hands down say that 2012 was probably the best year of my life! 2013 is obviously getting off to a rocky start, but I'm still looking forward to what the year holds when these hip operations are over!

Xmas Day with my darling Andrew