Dearly Beloved,

I can’t believe it’s been 5 days since my last update! It’s been a challenging several days of dealing with reactions to the narcotic medication (terrible headaches), then deciding to stop it, and then dealing with the withdrawal symptoms! I haven’t felt normal or had decent energy until today. I can understand how people get hooked on drugs and cannot get off them. Then you take other drugs to deal with the withdrawal symptoms! For example, I take Valium to sleep now that I don’t have the narcotic at night. Fortunately, Valium doesn’t have bad side effects, but it is highly addictive. I try to use only one pill every other night or less. I will be very glad when I don’t have to take medications anymore! Right now, I control the pain with an alternating mix of Tylenol and ibuprofen. It works most of the time and the rest of the time I use ice and pain meditations until it calms down.

I had my second PT appointment yesterday and paced myself much better. It’s amazing what a difference that makes! Still a little sore in my butt and this causes pain and restriction when I try to lift, extend, shift weight onto, and kick back my right leg.  My PT works on stretching and massaging the leg to release and break down scar tissue in the traumatized muscles. I can tell that is helping and I’m getting better.

I am now walking with a cane, see 3rd video at this link: Rhonda’s Hip Adventure Videos. Here’s one of me doing the cup obstacle course, created by my sweet Scott, see 2nd video at this link: Rhonda’s Hip Adventure Videos.  In it, you can hear Theo cheering me on in the background and Scott chuckling at him. I continue to do my home PT and then collapse on ice in my recliner:

This recliner is a life saver. It really helps to elevate my legs and take pressure off the hip. I also use this Princess Pillow Pile in bed to get my feet above my heart, which helps with reducing bruising and possible clotting.

I feel like I’m over the biggest hump of my recovery now and am thrilled to be off the pain meds. They really do a number on both my body and my head. I took copious notes on how to do this whole process better next time. Though, honestly, it is hard to even think about having to do this again right now… I hope it’s like child birth—I’ll be so excited about the result, I’ll forget about the hard parts and be ready when Leftie says it’s time. Tomorrow is the two-week mark! They will remove my bandage on Friday. I’m excited to see what the incision looks like.

I continue to be grateful and moved by all of your support, both physical and virtual. We can hardly keep up with the food and the flowers are filling the coffee table…

The cards and care packages are inspirational, thoughtful and comforting. Thank you and bless you all. I hope this finds you and yours well and happy.

I wanted to share one of my insights of the last few days: When the pain or discomfort gets bad, I’ve discovered it never lasts long before it shifts into another state. If I relax, breathe, and watch it, without resistance or unnecessary holding, it is constantly shifting, moving, changing. This gentle acknowledgement and allowing seems to facilitate it moving through me and releasing. And then I can feel pain free and relaxed in a shorter time. If I resist or become afraid or think I shouldn’t feel the way I do, it will persist longer and become more intense. Fascinating! I am grateful to my dear friend, Theresa, who taught me this way of being with pain. Now I understand what she was talking about!

Remember all hard and painful things pass like clouds in the sky if we simply allow them to move through us.

My love and big hugs to you all,

Rhonda

Dearly Beloved,

I passed my one week anniversary yesterday! Yay! To celebrate I spent 2 hours in physical therapy and have been recovering ever since! What I learned: When the PT gives you an exercise to do and says to do it 10 times, 2 sets, that does not mean do it for the whole 15 minutes until she come back. It means do the sets and then rest! By the time I was done, I’d fatigued my muscles so much I could hardly walk out on my walker. Oops! Live and learn. So, today I’m tired and sore, but still doing my 2x daily PT exercises.

I also learned that I can move the hip in a greater range of motion than I’d thought. This is helping me to stretch it and get it moving again, so it feels looser and stronger today.

Scott has set up a little home PT room for me in our guest bedroom and it works great! We even have an obstacle course made of coffee mugs in the hallway!

I would say I’m on my way to recovery now. But it is taking most of what I have to get through the day and do these 2 rounds of PT. This hip replacement business is hard work, lucky I’m retired!

Scott continues to be a saint and Theo a snuggle kitty. The weather has turned Indian Summer warm and I can see the leaves turning on the trees. I’m a lucky lady, indeed. This is a perfect spot for recovery, with a great family, neighbors and friends and a cozy home.

Thank you all for your supportive communiques! They make my days and give me inspiration and encouragement when I get tired of the pain and discouraged by the limitations. I remind myself that these things take time and this too shall pass. And then I will walk strong on my new hip (well at least on one side).

Scott and I made an interesting discovery the other day. Looking at my hips, we noticed I now have one girl hip and one boy hip. My right hip is out and up higher than my left, so I have a big hip with a waist on that side and on my left I’m still straight up and down! What a trip!

I hope this finds all of you well and that you are finding pleasure in the simple joys of life. I hold you all in my heart and thank you again for being here in such beautiful ways for me.

Much Love, Rhonda

Dearly Beloved,

(I thought I’d borrow a great line from Prince and you are all my dearly beloveds.)

Where have 3 more days gone? I recall having a really good day on Friday and probably did too much. Then, on Saturday morning I had a reaction to my Tramadol (pain med) and decided maybe it was better not to take it. Well…. Later that evening it was clear that I needed it and Scott suggested I start taking it again and just not take it first thing in the morning. It took me the morning Sunday to get my pain levels back to about a 2-3 and then I spent the rest of the day recovering from a rough night. Today I’ve got my medication regime down and am trucking along at about 0-2 on pain levels. I don’t seem to have a bad reaction if I take it around 10:00 am and 4:00 pm and then at night. I just have to sleep for an hour.

I am getting up and cruising around on my walker and doing exercises about every 2 hours. I am definitely sore, but it’s getting better. I can lift my leg which is huge! It means Scott is released from house arrest, which makes him very happy! I am fairly self-sufficient for a few hours at a time now.

He is a saint truly, patiently working through all these little ups and downs. He must spend 15 minutes every night tucking the “Princess and the Pea” into bed. He cooks and cleans up and hosts happy hour nightly with friends, family and neighbors. My mom and his dad came to dinner last night. She made her famous ham and clam chowder with corn muffins-yummy!

I feel absolutely spoiled rotten and am enjoying every minute of it. Thanks again for all of your sweet messages and gifts of support. You are all treasures in my life and it really helps with my recovery to feel all your love.

I took a video of me on my walker. It’s the first video in this Google album: Rhonda’s Hip Adventure Videos.

Here’s a picture of my on my walker:

I hope this finds all of you well. Know that I am doing great and slowly coming back. I still sleep a lot and don’t have a lot of stamina, but I’m getting better!

Much love and big hugs,

Rhonda

To all my beloved family, friends and neighbors,

I cannot tell you how much your loving support, messages, calls, cards, flowers and prayers have meant to me. I have felt completely embraced and held by love and light through this surgery and the beginnings of my recovery. Thank you so much! There were times along the way when I would dream of waves of positive energy flowing into me from everywhere and I knew it was all of you. I am truly blessed by all of you.

I’m happy to report the surgery was a success. I knew it was a great result when I was in recovery, and I saw the look on my surgeon’s face when he saw the xray. He was like a kid in the candy store. All the nurses kept saying, “He is so sweet. Don’t you just want to pinch his cheeks?” Then they would pat me on the arm and say, “Sweetie, you have a great doctor!” He took this photo of the xray with his cell phone and emailed it to me:

He had to do quite a bit of extra work to make a socket for me, as expected. He told me there was less muscle damage than he’d anticipated that he had to fix. But, my femur showed signs of stress because it had grown a bunch of bone spurs. So, to secure the implant in my femur, he zip tied it with metal wire, which you can see clearly in the xray. That may need to come out once the bone grows around the implant, if it bothers me.

My pain levels have been very manageable and I got to come home the morning after the surgery! It was good I stayed in the hospital the first night because my blood pressure dropped down to low 80’s over 50’s due to all the narcotics and anesthesia and they had to flush me with fluids and give me oxygen to get me through. I learned that heavy narcotics like Oxycodone don’t really work for me! I’m glad we didn’t learn that at home and poor Scott would have had to rush me to the ER! Right now I’m just taking some Tylenol and Tramadol (more moderate narcotic that I can tolerate).

I am very sore, but that’s normal. I can walk around on my walker and get in and out of chairs and bed. I also have some physical therapy exercises I am doing to get the muscles working again. They get you up almost as soon as you come to and can sit up. Pretty amazing.

The hospital (Renown South Reno) was wonderful! I had a private room overlooking a nice tree and everyone who worked with me was caring and attentive. I am particularly grateful to the night staff who had a lot of work to do to get me through the night.  I was amazed at the efficiency of their process. They know what they are doing! Here’s a sexy picture of me in my surgical gown (they can even plug you into a heat/AC unit to either heat or cool you–isn’t that nuts?)

My beloved Scott has attended to my every need and was there with me the whole way through, except in surgery and recovery. My gratitude to his friend, Marlene, who had coffee and sat with him during that time. The surgery took only about 90 minutes.  I am so grateful for his beautiful presence in my life–I cannot imagine having this experience without him. He’s fixing dinner while I’m typing. He is surely my rock and my sanctuary in this world.

And guess who else was there? My dad! When they gave me the first pills to start putting me under, he showed up. He looked like he did when I was young. He took my hand in his big, old paws and said, “Come on, kid, let’s go hang out under the apple tree.” Suddenly, I was under the old apple tree behind our ranch house, lying in the cool grass and watching the clouds go by. When I was young and we were both tired from doing chores, we would lie down under that tree and cloud watch, calling out the shapes we saw. It is one of my favorite memories of my sweet father. I cannot tell this part of the story without crying. It was an exceptionally beautiful experience. He stayed with me the whole way through my hospital stay and comes in and out to check on me here at home. He tells me, “I am only a thought away, always.”

It reminds me that life is a mystery greater than we can ever know and that love connects us eternally to one another–whether we are in a body or not.

So, on that sweet note, I’m going to wrap up this epistle and go eat some supper.

God Bless all of you for being here for me-I am so grateful! I’ll probably keep doing group emails for awhile, because my bandwidth and sitting time isn’t great yet. But I’ll be in touch individually as I am able.

Love to you all,

Rhonda

This is Scott again…

I am dictating what Rhonda tells me…

“HAPPY Equinox!!!

She is home!!!  Yay!  Got released at 11:30 am.  She is getting around on her walker and the pain is OK.”

The main thing to know is she has her smile, which tells me she is doing well!  Not much more to report, just she  climbing the ladder of recovery, thank God!  I think we are on the home stretch!  Hopefully, tomorrow, she will be able to write you herself, if not, I will!

Again, THANK You all for your kind words of support!  I make sure she hears all of them!  They make her smile!  She feels so very loved by you all!

Until tomorrow!

Much Love,

scott

Hi!

All is well!

It is almost 8 PM and I just back from the hospital.  Rhonda and I left the house for the surgery center at 7 am this morning.  We checked in, Rhonda got prep’ed for surgery and they put her under and took her away at exactly 9:30 am as scheduled.  The replacement took about 90 minutes and the doctor was extremely happy with the results.  She was in recovery for a little over an hour and up to her room in the hospital at 1 PM.  The doctor said “She had the hip of a 70 year old!  During surgery, I had to keep remembering she was only 51!”  Basically, he had to rebuild her hip.  “Normal people have a cereal bowl shaped hip socket, Rhonda had a saucer.”  He had to drill into the pelvis and insert the new socket, then wire (“zip tie”) it to hold it in place.  You could tell the surgery was a challenge for him, one he was excited to take on and he was very pleased that he was able to fix it!

After Rhonda got in her room, she was having pretty bad hip pain.  They gave her more pain meds and managed to get on top of the pain.  She was in and out of sleep most of the afternoon.  She ate some chicken breast around 6:00 PM and felt good enough to get up and walk for the first time and pee.  Success!  She said the hip felt different, but better.  After, she she ate up all of her dinner and was extremely happy and pain free!  I left the hospital about 7:30 and she was going to relax and go to sleep.  Hopefully she will be pain free tonight and sleep well!  Rhonda should be back home tomorrow.

Thank you all for your kind messages, thoughts, prayer and well wishes!  They are extremely helpful!

Scott

We are back from the weekend celebration of Scott’s father’s 92^nd Birthday. I’m so glad that I waited on the surgery so I could go. I know it meant a lot to Jim that I was there. It was a lovely reconnection with the family and I felt such loving support from all of them.

Many had good advice for me from their own joint replacements. Bob reinforced that it is really important not to do more than the PT’s tell you in therapy, because it will “set you back.” He helped Kay through dual knee replacements and his brother through a hip replacement this year. So, he knows! Jimmy told me, take a stool softener every time you take a pain pill. (That explains why they say 1-6 per day on the bottle.) He said that he did that last time and it worked great. “Only took me 9 surgeries to figure that out.”

I found myself having a most interesting conversation with one of Scott’s cousins. When I told him about my hip surgery, he winced. “Oh, I hate the thought of surgery! I went with my mom to chemo and about passed out. I don’t think I could do it.” We then talked about how you do what you have to do to keep living life. I told him about learning that I could be with my greatest fears: pain and disability, and still live a very full life. I described being instantly 90 and understanding what that was like and that there was much still to enjoy even though my range and my abilities had diminished significantly. “I watch flowers bloom, tomatoes ripen, the movements of the sun and the clouds, and I have developed a closer relationship with the cat.” He asked if I was afraid and I said no. Truly I have no fear, just a feeling of growing peace and utter confidence that this will all be perfect.

Now the surgery prep is launched in earnest, two more days. By honoring my new limits, my pain levels went back down. I am managing without ibuprofen or bud budder. I can take Tylenol and I think I’ve done a couple of doses. But mostly I’ve used wine. I was so afraid about giving up the ibuprofen, but I didn’t need to be.

Today in my morning meditation practice I felt such strong energy coursing through me, vibrating. I feel angels around me and the prayers and well wishes of so many. I am very lucky indeed!

Danielle, Dr. Shukla’s assistant, called this morning to tell me I’ve been placed back in the number 2 slot at 9:30 a.m. Check in at 7:30. There is some chance I could go home same day. We will see how it goes. I am surrendered to whatever needs to happen for the best outcome. I trust my team totally to make the best decisions and I will do what they tell me and nothing more.

At my pre-op appointment last week, Dr. Shukla said no yoga or swimming for 6 weeks. He wants to make absolutely sure that the implants have set in the bone and everything has healed securely before he turns me loose. Smart man. Just do your therapy and be careful. No sleeping on my back or driving for a month. Use the walker first 2 weeks, or as long as you need the stability. Then use the cane. Don’t be a rock star/cowboy. I intend for a perfect result and that requires my perfect compliance. Now that I have my head wrapped around 6 weeks, I’m ok. November 1st will come before I know it.

My pain levels have risen to 4-6 when I’m walking and I can barely walk for any distance at all now. Standing is also getting tougher. Yikes! I’m timing this just right. I can make it 12 more days.

Had to have Scott do Walmart shopping today. After a trip to the DMV, I’m spent. I think I can do one little outing a day, unless it is just an in and out kind of thing. Pacing myself is becoming absolutely essential.

I figure it is good to back off now and turn more over to Scott. Soon, it will be up do him to do it all for a while. I certainly don’t question my decision to get this done now. It appears I’ve extended the life of my hip as far as it’s willing to go.

I’m through my hospital pre-op and the insurance authorization came in yesterday. One more pre-op next week and then we are down to surgery day. I feel very ready and that everything else that is left is doable. Glad I got a jump on some things, since walking at all now is so ouchy.

I went to the Physical Therapy Department at ROC for my pre-surgery assessment on August 8th. The PT went over all the restrictions I would have post surgery. I realized that for some time I would not be able to get in and out of my 2-door coupe, or operate the clutch. I love my old Chevy Cavalier. It has absolutely nothing automatic in it. You can’t get cars like it anymore. I went into denial for the next two weeks. Then, I figured I had to get a grip. I’m no longer a 2-door, sports coupe kinda gal. I have 2 hip replacements ahead of me and it’s time for a sensible set of wheels to drive them around in.

Scott and I started talking about what we might want and both were drawn to Subarus. We couldn’t decide if a Forester or an Outback would be better. Scott called his cousin, who has both models, to ask which they liked better. To his surprise, he caught Dean at a truck dealership about to trade in the Forester! He offered it to us for what the dealer had offered him, which was a steal when you consider what an awesome, fully loaded car this is and only a 2012. I’ve never owned anything this nice in my life.

We decided to take it and I went and picked it up on the 24th of August with our parents in tow. We made a day of it. I figured it was a car for all of us and we all needed to make sure we could get in and out of it. Plus, it’s always great to see Linda and Dean. The car was even nicer than I’d remembered. I was overcome with gratitude to have my problem solved in such a wonderful way, and not have to deal with dealers!

Here’s Blue, as I call her:

Then I had to decide what to do with my beloved Moxie. It occurred to me that the young man down the street had turned 15 and would soon be needing a car. I’ve watched him grow from this shy kid to a young man who will actually cross the street to say hi these days. I thought it would be sweet to know she was just down the street, and it would be a great car for him to learn in. His folks came by with him and we took a test drive. I’ll always remember the moment when he reached for a button to roll the window down and I had to explain what the hand crank was for. I realized he’d never seen one in his life! Today they came to pick her up. Here’s Trevor with his new ride:

So we’ve done the neighborhood car shuffle and we are all set–ready for our new adventures!

Yesterday, Scott and I met with Dr. Shukla’s assistant, Davis. He explained all they would do and reassured us 1) there is plenty of bone surrounding the acetabulum to work with, but they can graft if they need to and will use screws to secure the cup 2) they do 30-40 hips a month and 10% are dysplastic, so this is not an extremely unusual surgery for them 3) you didn’t wait too long–we always wait until you can’t walk and have pain even at rest if you try (especially at night), so this is the exact perfect moment to do this 4) we will not do the left one until it gets to this point 5) what you have done in taking good care of yourself has prolonged the life of your hips, not the other way around 6) these are rated 25-30 years, the plastic liner is what will wear out and may need replacing 7) to prolong its life, limit impact activity–swim, bike, health rider; don’t overdo walking or hiking 8) keep your weight down.

So, I came away feeling much better and reassured that it is all perfect and this is the right team. I did ask him if they were the best on staff and he said, “Yes, that’s why you were sent to us.” He was absolutely confident and very matter-of-fact. Scott loved him! I will be limited in my activities for about 6 weeks and on a walker for two weeks. I should be able to drive around 4 weeks.