drugs, schmugs

It's amazing to me that the pain really hasn't been the worst of this thing. They tried me on a different narcotic - one that is supposed to be widely tolerated - and it was just as bad on my system. I don't think I was hallucinating but I haven't felt so sick with the flu as I did with the drugs. So that's it for me - Tylenol it is. Yesterday I worked my way through a fair bit of ginger ale and some crackers, eventually working my way up to rice - yippee!

For now I'm just looking forward to feeling well enough to attend my friends' wedding tomorrow, and I'm really bummed about a show tonight at Montmartre that I'd love to see, but other than that I think I'm on the mend.

8 days post-op

yuck

pain meds

yesterday was a particularly nasty day. Percocet and I don't get on well. That's what I'd been on since surgery and on Sunday I was finally able to piece together that the hallucinations were thanks to the Percocet. I kept dozing off and waking myself up a minute later talking to someone who wasn't there. That alone I might have been able to hack, but it was making me feel dead-ill besides... didn't want food, dizzy, nauseous. So I swapped out to Tylenol yesterday while I tried to get in touch with my doc, but it wasn't cutting it and I couldn't get through to him. Finally later in the day I caught a nurse who suggested trying a half dose of the Perc but that threw me back into feeling awful. Thankfully the nurse had a bright idea of mixing Tylenol with a benedryl which serves to make you sleepy enough that you doze off and your body can get back to healing itself.

Last night I slept for about 12 hours (not quite straight, but close).

Achy allover today but some swelling is going down a bit. Sick of the anti-embolism stockings.

But so glad to not have the issues from the Percocet. I made the same choice after my wisdom teeth were out and they gave me hydrocodone. Pain over drugs.

feeling human

4 days post-op and I'm actually feeling human! I took a shower for the first time today (bath-in-a-bag is great, but there's just nothing like a shower) and I'm off the anti-nausea meds. We learned they not only fix the nausea, but also make you dizzy and weak, and they block some seratonin production. In other words the faster you can quit taking it the better.

It feels nice to sit up for meals and crutch out to the back porch for some fresh air, and with the great weather I can at least have all the windows open.

Sorry for the lack of updates in the last few days but I've definitely been fogging in and out. In any case everything is going well, and I'm much more coherent now!

home safe

I'm home from the hospital and achy but doing very well. Halucinating a bit on the pain meds so I think I'll crash out and sleep for a while..

So far the only picture I have is an x-ray taken after the screws were put in. I'll post images I have available eventually...

the world needs more Lerts

I'm awake and alert (as of about 1:30 yesterday) and the doctor said the surgery went very well! In a nice twist they didn't do general anesthesia - an epidural and then just enough in my IV to keep me in a gentle sleep. I remember the first needle go and then I woke up in the recovery room.

The great thing about not being under general is that I don't really have an 'anesthesia hangover - no nausea and not too dopey feeling.

I spent the night fogging in and out of sleep with continuous episodes of CSI, Alias, and Angel.

Thanks for all your good thoughts!

toes

Life keeps you on them. Your toes, that is. A came home from his frisbee game tonight with a knee he can hardly put weight on! We talked to a nurse-on-call and she said to ice it and wait to see how it's feeling in the morning. Good thing we have a spare pair of crutches around.

surgery schedule

9:15 am - arrive at Stoughton Hospital

10:15 or 10:30 - into surgery

The surgery will last "at least 2 hours" and then 45 minutes in the recovery room.

1:30 - pretty much the soonest I can expect to be somewhat coherent. Maybe later if the surgeon finds extra cartilage junk to clean out.

The phone number at Stoughton Hospital is 608.873.6611

former patient

I've been going through bouts of being fabulously nervous about this whole deal, but I was able to do one thing that helped me feel better. My doctor's office arranged to let me talk with a former patient of my same surgeon. Trying to do that is the best advice I could give anyone going through a major procedure. I spoke with a guy who's 4 years younger than me and went through an open FAI procedure in late January. Before his hip went bad he was a baseball player (a right handed pitcher with a bad right hip) and running 10 or 15 miles a week. Now he's pitching again and back to running. He said at 6 and a half weeks he was walking without crutches or a limp and that he was starting to jog a bit within 3 months.

He also said Friday is going to be miserable. Apparently they usually give an epidural for this procedure in addition to the general anesthetic. The epidural has a 24 to 48 hour window of effectiveness, so waking up on Friday morning isn't so much fun. On the up-side he said that by Sunday he felt fairly human.

I'll be calling this afternoon to find out the actual time of my surgery. They expect that it will be in the morning, which would mean heading out to Stoughton Hospital around 6 or 7 and then leaving the next morning. I'll see if I can find out when they expect me to be coherent too...

reanimating, deanimating

This has truly been the great abandoned blog. To be quite honest I got a bit weirded out by the basic voyeuristic nature of personal blogs. I have been living plenty of my life in a somewhat public arena among my various artistic endeavors.

I think this summer might be a good time to bring some life back in to the abandoned blog. A few reasons:

1. (here's the deanimation portion of the title) I'll be basically stuck in the house for a good 6 weeks post surgery later this month and likely bored out of my mind with not much in reach but my pain meds, a big stack of books, regular doses of Netflix, and my laptop. Reaching out to the world out of my house gets appealing under these circumstances!
   
   
2. The reason for the surgery is something that is a relatively new (last 10 years or so) diagnosis and it seems most patients are desperate to learn anything they can from other people that are going/have gone through it. So for anyone who finds this and has been diagnosed with a torn labrum and FAI (femoral acetabular or femoroacetabular impingement) you can keep watching here and I'll feed you all sorts of details about my experiences with the diagnosis, the procedure itself and the progress of my hip's recovery. I'll be having an open surgical dislocation with femoral notchplasty. They'll burr down part of the ball of the femur, repair and reattach the labrum, and burr down part of the bone on the pelvic side of things. I'll even tag posts so you can ignore the non-hip musings.
   

For those of you who used to keep an eye on this set of musings, but don't get to see me very much or at all (or don't know me!) here's the update (admitting to that voyeuristic nature in blog readers):

In the last year I have...

• gotten engaged:
  
  
• bought a house:
  
  
• relieved the dying pan of its duties
  
  
• finally finished and released a third cd

So there you have it folks. My cortisone shot has been fading so my time here will likely be increasing as I make good friends with the couch!