I just looked by at my last post about my hip replacement, that was a long time ago!

Let’s see what has happened?  I should tell you the good and the bad…I think this is going to be a short post.

The Bad:   I had vertigo attacks every day for 37 days straight.  I think I had good reason to be concerned.  My personal belief is that the Coumadin had something to do with it.  I was on the medication for 28 days, give it a week more to get out of my system….vertigo slowed down drastically.  I’ve had some vertigo since then, but nothing like I had before.  Thank goodness.

About a week or so after surgery I had vertigo that was very different than I have ever had before.  I felt like I was being thrown around the room.  Literally like my body was being tossed all around.  It was horrific.  I threw up and threw up.  My brain felt like it was coming apart in my skull.  I thought I might be dying.  I was so pale Stuart called an ambulance and I was taken to the emergency room.  My darling husband and sister spent about 7 hours at the hospital with me.  The tossing around stopped when I was in the ambulance, but I still felt like I was moving.  (I got vomit on the Ambulance attendant, I was so embarrassed.  She was so sweet.)  It is very difficult being in the emergency room when you have vertigo.  They can’t really do anything.  They gave me the same medication I have at home, I was just much more uncomfortable.

Funny story, I had to pee when I was in the ER, and of course I had to use a bed pan (they gave me a huge bed pan), can you imagine how much pain that caused when I just had my hip replaced 6 days before?  I must say I’m glad they gave me such a big bed pan, but I still over flowed it.  It was a mess.  The nurses had a big laugh though, they swore I could not have held that much pee and not burst my bladder!  However, it was not a comfortable thing to change my sheets and clean me up!

I’m still having a lot of pain because of my back.  The sciatic pain is hard to deal with sometimes.  My doctor told me to wait a while before I went to the see the back doctor, he thinks it will get better when all the swelling goes down and that could take a few months.  I can’t see the swelling now, except in my foot, but I guess it’s probably still there inside.  I’m really hoping the aqua therapy will help with this again.

The only other bad thing was that my physical therapy was a little behind because of the vertigo.  Unfortunately, I missed quite a few sessions of the home PT.  However, I work hard on my own, my physical therapist was always surprised that I was as far along as I was considering hadn’t been able to keep on schedule.

I saw my doctor, Bryan Springer, MD of OrthoCarolina, exactly one month after my surgery.  The first thing he said was when he did the surgery  my hip looked pretty bad in there, then he showed me my x-ray of my new hip, and said I was doing great!  I go back to see him in 3 months!  Woo Hoo!  I did request to go to further physical therapy since I didn’t get to finish my PT at home and he was all for it.  Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to start it yet.  I’ll be doing Aquatic Therapy and the place I went before have drastically cut their hours so I’ll be going to a different place.  I’m a little nervous because the other place was very quiet and I could easily hear my therapist.  I don’t know how the new place will be, I have a LOT of trouble with my hearing so if it is the slightest bit noisy in there I may have a lot of difficulty.

By the 4th week I was able to walk around the house with just a cane.  Now I can walk around just about everywhere with just a cane, if I didn’t need a walker for my balance issues.  I don’t put pressure on my walker though, it is there just to help me with balance so I’m putting my weight on my hip.  I’m walking a lot.  I can easily go up and down stairs, as long as I’m not too dizzy.  🙂  I can walk around the house and yard without any assistance at all…unless, of course, I need it for my balance. How cool is that??

I think I’m doing pretty good at PT by myself, but I want some guidance from a therapist about when I can stop following the “rules” I have to follow, and how hard I can push myself in certain exercises.  I know from experience I can get more range of motion exercising in the pool so I’m really looking forward to that.

For anyone out there who may be reading this who has Avascular Necrosis (AVN), I want you to know that the pain from AVN stopped the moment I had the surgery.  The pain from recovering from surgery has not been anything close to the pain of AVN.  I sincerely wish all of my illnesses could be taken care of so easily.  I do realize that this could show up in other joints, I will deal with that if it happens, until then I’m not going to worry about it.  If you are reading this and you have AVN in multiple joints I have the utmost compassion for you and hope you can find help.

*You may have notices my shirt is way too big.  I plateaued with my weight loss when the pain from the AVN started and I couldn’t move around much.  I didn’t want to get clothes that weren’t going to fit when I started to lose weight again. 🙂  It has started again…yay!  Very slowly though.  I did get the pants from Good Will so they fit pretty good.

**yes this is late, it has been more than 6 weeks since my surgery but I had a bit of trouble with my computer.  I’ll catch up a bit more soon!