For those loyal readers following my hip replacement surgery, I wanted to give you an update.
Despite not playing pickleball, not being able to go to barre classes with my family, and being far less social this summer, I was in fairly good spirits until a few weeks before surgery. I had to start asking for help from my family, and I hate asking for help. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I don’t like asking for help because I’m sensitive to rejection. My inner critic is always telling me no one cares about me, so it’s easy for me to interpret people’s actions as not caring.
In addition, my surgery got moved up by a week. To most “normal” people, that would be good news. But I had been planning for 3 months to have the surgery on a particular day, and the change required me to cancel additional appointments, cancel my friend’s visit–which I had been looking forward to all summer–and stop my pain meds immediately. Not that they were helping. But still. It required a lot of change.
I was also dreading feeling more pain than I was already experiencing, since it had become excruciating. And I was determined to do my exercises every day until the surgery. I ended up skipping my exercises the night before surgery because I had to wake up super early and by that point it seemed irrelevant.
The good news is that I was super relaxed and joking with all the staff, nurses, and doctors while I waited for my surgery. I fell asleep before they even started the anesthesia because they gave me something for anxiety. And after I could feel my legs and they made me walk, I walked effortlessly. And because they gave me an epidural, I wasn’t in pain until about 12:30 am Saturday morning.
I have to admit, the next 2 days were pretty excruciating. Mainly because I was trying to be compliant and get up and walk every hour or 2 while I was awake, and it was torture getting on and off the couch. l only used the pain meds to sleep because I was so paranoid about addiction, so mainly I sucked it up. Luckily by Monday I was good.
This was also when I had my first PT session and he said I was in the top 5% of people in recovery. And you know how I like getting A’s. He said I didn’t need to use the walker anymore and that I would be able to drive later in the week, which is 3 weeks earlier than expected. And as he predicted, by Thursday night I moved back home and by Friday I was walking unassisted and drove 3 times.
My progress has continued to improve rapidly, but because my entire body had been compensating for my hip, I have become more aware of my back pain, which had been present before the surgery but I guess I didn’t register it. But since I dove into work the second week because of my irrational fear of not having money, I had a knot in my back that I had to try to massage and stretch out 5-6 times a day. I would have much preferred to take all the time I had set aside to be off and watch the U.S. Open but the drill sergeant was not having it.
On a positive note, my friend did get to visit me over Labor Day weekend, which worked out better because I was able to walk and drive. We even went to Anakeesta, which ended up being a bust. But I made a video about it that I thought was funny, even if no one else on the trip did.
I’ve learned a lot of lessons from this experience, some of which I’ve shared on my Instagram page if you want to check them out. But I’ll share theme here, too.
- People care. As always, when I’m vulnerable, my inner critic is the loudest, but it is always wrong. My family took great care of me. My friend drove for me and gave me tons of positive reinforcement. My friends checked on me. Even my clients asked about me. It’s true that it is an illusion that we are separated from love. We are always connected.
- Pain tolerance is a mixed blessing. Had I gone to the orthopedist sooner, like 3 years ago when I had planned, perhaps I could have delayed my surgery. But if it weren’t for my determination to be as strong as possible and do the exercises for 3 months before my surgery, perhaps I wouldn’t have recovered so quickly.
- Patience is a virtue. I argued in a former blog post that it is not, but that’s because I was, and still am, impatient. But having to wait for hip surgery, and having to wait another 4 weeks to play is helping me practice, and I think I’m the better for it.
- I have much to be grateful for. It’s true that in any given moment, we can look at what we don’t have, or we can look at what we have. We can look at both, even, and perhaps that’s the better option. Rather than “bright-siding” it, which is dismissive of our pain, we acknowledge everything and then decide what in this moment we want to focus on. Right now, the thing that keeps me going is the hope that I can play tennis again, after 6 long years of not being able to. And even if I can’t, I want to be active and see my friends again.
Normal in Training 