My (Canadian) Hip Replacement – Part One: Lead-up to the Big Day

It’s Day 5 after my total left hip replacement!

After years of frustration, limitation and trepidation, it finally happened. I hope my story will in some way help others facing hip replacement and provide a better level of understanding for friends and family. It’s what I wish I’d been able to find at the point when I was anxiously seeking info and reassurance about the procedure and the result.

IMPORTANT: Each person’s story is unique. Others’ experiences at any stage might well be better, worse, the same, different, faster or slower – whatever! Please do not expect your experience (or that of someone you know) to mirror mine and, most especially, please do not judge a faster or slower (or more or less painful) recovery to be superior or inferior simply on that basis.

This is the first of three major components of my hip story, planned to occur in the following order:

Part 1 – lead-up to the big day
Part 2 – surgery, from hospital arrival to hospital release
Part 3 – background: my long journey to surgery

Part 4 – my three-month recovery back to normal life (hopefully!) – will happen in shorter, more frequent updates, as it happens

So first, a few basics: due to early-onset osteoarthritis, my left hip had deteriorated badly and after years of treating the symptoms through various means and with varying degrees of success (I’ll elaborate in a future installment), I signed on last year for the only real long-term fix – a total hip replacement.

At 55, I’m actually considered young (!) for a hip replacement, though there are many who’ve had them younger than me. Here in Canada, at least, people are encouraged to wait till at least age 60 for hip replacement, reducing the likelihood of ever needing more than one. But life for me had been on hold too long already. (More on this later.)

The date was set, in early fall of 2010, for Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011.

Once the New Year arrived, the whole deal began to seem more real and each milestone after that – one month to go, three weeks, less than two weeks, mere days now! – brought the impending event into ever-sharper focus.

I dutifully amassed the load of stuff I’d need after surgery:

- walker (the non-wheeled variety)
- reacher
- cane
- crutches
- toilet seat height-raiser
- wedge cushion
- sock aid
- long-handled shoe horn

That’s a process guaranteed to make you feel old, if a bad hip doesn’t do that for you already.

I’d made arrangements at work to be off for the six-to-seven weeks I was told I’d need to recover enough to return to the office. By the time my surgery date was a few weeks away, concentration slipped more each day. On the Friday before my surgery, my workmates wished me well with a lovely, delicious chocolate cake. Inscribed on top was ‘Hip Hip Hooray’!

The weekend before my surgery date was a frantic flurry of activity as I thought of more and more things I might want or need. I finally found the long-handled shoe horn that had eluded me. I packed three bags – one for clothes, one for toiletries … and one filled with food! Wary of hospital food and doubtful that hospital staff would let me eat as soon after surgery as I’d like (been there before!), I put together a pile of palatable non-perishables to keep within easy reach.

The night before, I enjoyed a ‘last dinner’ with my husband and children that included beautiful rare beef tenderloin steak and a good red wine. Before bed, I scrubbed my left hip in the shower for the requisite 3 minutes, using a sponge impregnated with special antibacterial soap, which I’d been given at a hospital pre-op visit.

The morning of February 22nd I was up and dressed early. Resigned to the fact that I could eat or drink nothing, I puttered and fidgeted till 10AM, when it was time to leave for the hospital, then suddenly remembered I might need a case for my glasses. While upstairs hunting for the case, the phone rang. For me. And the voice at the other end of the line informed me my surgery was cancelled thanks to a bed shortage!!

I was stunned and overwhelmed with a sense of disbelief, not to mention injustice – after months of mental prep for this event, and it IS a huge thing to wrap your head around, I was back at square one.

When now? I wailed.
March 23rd, was the word.

So, after what amounted to nothing more than an elaborate dress rehearsal, I sheepishly returned to work and the countdown began once again.

The hospital soon called me in for a new round of blood work because that stuff’s only good for 30 days. March 23rd would be well past that. While there, I was dismayed to discover that some poor sods have been bumped 2 or 3 times.

A hellish month passed quickly, in which a number of stressful incidents arose, making me glad my surgery had been delayed; dealing with these unexpected events would have been incredibly problematic otherwise. At times, overloaded, I wondered if I should perhaps reschedule to an even later date. I didn’t – I think somewhere, in the back of my mind, I secretly expected I’d be canceled again anyway.

The day arrived. No cancellation call.

We drove to the hospital. No turn-away there. Admitted without incident, things seemed to flow rather alarmingly from street clothes, to gown, to gurney, to operating room.
This was the real deal.

And that’s a wrap for Part 1 – join me again for Part 2, when I detail my surgical experience.