I’ve got to give myself shots to the belly.The road to recovery is littered with many things, spent hypodermics for example.
To combat the danger of blot clots, I have to give myself a small shot of blood thinner in my belly fat (good thing I’ve been stockpiling the stuff). The magic elixir enters the blood stream and orders all blood cells to “Keep it movin’, folks, nothing to see here. Get on back to work! Don’t be clustering all together. Break it up, break it up!”
In the hospital, the shots are administered every 12 hours. Once sprung from here, I will have daily shots. It will go on like this for 28 days following surgery.
They tell me I’m getting better. My hemoglobin count is up, the doctor says I may get out on Friday. My surgery was Monday, my freedom may be Friday.
I’m ready. I’ve heard there is air out there. Free air, and free air is the best air to breathe.
Proof that perhaps I should have been in the psych ward…For many years, I have played a silly little joke for no good reason other than the amusement that I only receive in my imagination.
It goes like this: if I am in a room with a dry erase board, I like to write AVOID THE BOLLINGER EFFECT on the board before leaving. My unrequited amusement is imagining the people coming into the room later, reading the “Bollinger Effect” caution on the board and wondering what it means. “‘Avoid the Bollinger effect’– what’s that?”
“I dunno. Probably some new corporate initiative.”
“Yeah, sounds about right.”
“Who’s Bollinger?”
“Got me. Any idea what the ‘effect’ is?”
“How am I supposed to know? I get like 140 e-mails a day– I’m not about to read all of them word-for-word…”
“O.K., I get it, you’re busy. I’m busy, too. But if we see the effect, we’d better avoid it.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m all about avoiding the Bollinger Effect.”
And so on.
Well, mid-way through my hospital stay I decided to write AVOID BOLLINGER EFFECT on the dry erase board in my room. Why?
Boredom? Silliness? A bad case of the smart ass?
Your diagnosis, doctor. Writing it did make me feel better, though.
Believe it or not, one day after total hip replacement surgery, physical therapists will come around, get you out of bed, put you behind a walker and make you take some steps all by yourself— just like the big boys and big girls do!
No, you won’t be doing tap steps, soft shoes or leg kicks like a Rockette, but you will be taking Frankenstein-like motions forward, ably assisted by your trusty walker. The highest seat in the land.It feels good to be up out of bed, even if it is just to sit in a tall seat. Why a tall seat and elevated toilet seat? Why are you advised to place pillows on any seat? Because for the next 12 weeks, you must adhere to strict HIP PRECAUTIONS. If you do not follow these rules, your pretty new titanium hip could get dislocated. You do not want to double down on your pain.
Here’s the rules you MUST obey:
1. Don’t bend your operated hip beyond 90 degrees (sitting low is asking for trouble)
2. Do not cross your legs
3. Do not turn your operated leg foot inward
Think carefully before you pivot or bend to pick-up something. Guide yourself into a chair slowly and use your arms to lift yourself out of a chair. Take it easy on that hip! Suffice to say, doing cartwheels and summersaults are not advised (pity, that). You can do it, yes you can!Adhere to the rules, they are your friends.
Two days after your hip surgery, you are encouraged to go for a longer walk– down the hospital hallway. It’s like walking The Green Mile, only not so green and not quite a mile long.
You move slowly forward, heel to step and go and go. Soon you’re eating up linoleum at a glacial pace. Your walker’s wheels are warming, your new hip is slowly getting broken-in. You’re smokin’, babe, you’re smokin’!
Three days after surgery, you are encouraged to do what seems impossible: go up and down stairs.
When you first look upon the stairs, they appear like Mt. Everest, without the snow. You cannot imagine making this journey solo, but your physical therapist becomes Knute Rockne and gives you faith– makes you believe in yourself. Come, ascend into thin air…For this journey you have two basic rules:
1. When going up, lead with your strong leg
2. When coming down, lead with your operated leg– very carefully
Hold the handrail and use your folded walker as a support. And whatever you do, do it slowly. You do not want to end up another senseless stairway casualty.
You do as instructed, your physical therapist cheering you on, and amazingly it works. You go up, you come down. You can do the impossible. You are truly incredible! You are absolutely amazing! You are a physical dynamo!
You are also tired as hell. You hobble back to bed anxiously awaiting your next dosage of pain meds. As the ancients said (after their hip surgeries), “The journey of 1,000 miles begins one pain-filled step after another.”
The cell has few bars, but you’re not going anywhere anyway.“Whaddya in for?” asks the inmate. “Hip replacement. And you?” “Ain’t none of your bee’s wax,” he says whittling a bar of soap into a hotel-size bar of soap. “Just never you mind,” he says as he rides a goat on a merry-go-round and his head goes Linda Blair in The Exorcist as unicorns dance a jig on hind legs and penguins play saxes and do backflips.
I wake up. It’s another nurse. She wants blood. Tie-me-off-and-jab-and-ouch-and-tape- the-bleeding-hole and I’m back to sleep again. Then woken-up in a couple hours to have my blood pressure and temperature taken.
And I go back to sleepville for a few hours until the nurse and an assistant come to prop me on my side placing pillows at my back for support.
Plus sign = Less pain!Throughout it all, I maintain a four hour watch for “Daddy’s Little Helpers.” I’m off the morphine drip but I need something to take the edge off.
I had asked to get my pain pills every four hours, but sometimes they will miss a feeding. I learned with my last hip replacement, you never ever ever want to get behind in your pain meds. Once you get behind, it’s hell getting back to the joy of dull pain instead of suffering agonizing pain. The meds are for pain management, not enjoyment. There is no enjoyment in hip replacement surgery–I think some president may have said that.
On my legs are air-powered wraps that work pressure up and down the limbs to keep blood moving. A big danger following any operation is blood clots. These leg-air-wrappies work to alleviate that threat. And they feel good, to boot.
Another thing to reduce the risk of blood clots is giving myself daily shots in my belly with small hypos of a magic blood thinning medicine. I must do these for 30-straight days and the shots do not feel nearly as good as the leg wraps do. So slow this time does go so slow.During the day, I face perhaps the ultimate painful challenge– finding something decent to watch on TV. I grip the remote and channel surf up and down like an anteater in search of just one tiny morsel to enjoy. But there is little entertainment nourishment to be found.
Come mealtimes, I search the hospital menu. It reads well, but none of the food delivers on the deliciousness of the thought of said meal. I can’t say it’s bad food, who knows, maybe the drugs have altered my taste buds. I keep playing menu roulette and am served plate after plate of disappointment.
I read. Books comfort me. But I have not chosen happy literature. “Cold Spring Harbor” by Richard Yates, a brilliant writer but not a pick-me-up kind of storyteller. My other book is the last known journal of Richard Brautigan. Not long after writing this journal, Brautigan pulled his own plug. Hmm, maybe I should have packed something a little lighter.
It doesn’t matter. At this point it’s all about serving your time until they spring you. I’m serving hard time, hospital time– where every hour takes four hours to complete.
A year and a half earlier, I had had my right hip replaced. Same doctor, same procedure, same hospital. Back then, the post-op pressures I faced were related to bodily fluids:
1. Pee quickly, or get a catheter.
2. Produce red blood cells or get units of blood and extra hospital time for monitoring.
After my first hip replacement, I could do neither of these important tasks. The anesthesia apparently dries-up one’s urine flow, and my body was not about to bother with making some fresh red to replenish itself. Essentially my body was flipping me a big bird for hurting it (my body can be petty that way).
So, this go ‘round, I was determined to at least avoid the dreaded catheter. There wasn’t much I could do about giving my body a pep talk concerning the importance of rapid blood production. My body’s got a mind all its own.
So, I concentrated on ‘making water.’ No dice. Try as I may, and Lord knows I tried, I was dry. A drought of pee for me. The nurse even gave me overtime to see if I could score. Nothing.
I will not go into the details of receiving a catheter hook-up except to say it is probably an early initiation rite as one passes through the gates of hell. However, it was not as painful as my memory had portrayed it from last time (sometimes memory can be a drama queen). It was intense, yes, but it was over quickly, and once the deed is done, the issue is laid to rest as long as you’re tapped. My catheter was in for 48 hours.
A catheter is the ultimate lazy guy device. If getting one installed was not so painful, I imagine a catheter would be popular at football games, rock concerts and for long driving trips. The other pressure, the blood production, well, I failed that also. I was apparently white as my hospital sheet on the second day. My hemoglobin count was low, about the same count one would find in a stick. The kind doctor ordered me two units of A+ blood. This vintage is one Count Dracula described as “Precocious and playful” while being “invigoratingly intriguing to the palate, with hints of currants, blackberries and earthy exuberance. A wonderful pick-me-up!”
Fluids were now going out, fluids were now coming in. I was on the road to recovery. All I had to do was serve my hospital time and survive physical therapy.
The last thing I remember was being wheeled into the operating room. I had been asked to answer the following questions on eight different occasions that morning in the hospital: What is your name, your birthdate, and what procedure are you having today?
My left hip and left foot were marked with a Sharpie Marker. All of this advanced technology was to alleviate mistakes, something like accidentally getting a lobotomy instead of a total hip replacement. Comforting, this modern medical science. The Wedge of Truth, Strap On In!I remember the operating room being cold. I recall the operating table being metallic, cool and narrow. I remember someone saying something about... and I was out as the doc did his dirty deed for the next two hours, placed in the recovery area and monitored for an hour, and finally assigned my post-op home: room #405, Piedmont Hospital, Atlanta.
I awoke to numbness, a loving wife, my legs strapped to a foam wedge placed between my thighs (to keep my new ball joint at the proper angle, I guess), and a morphine drip. I was told that the operation was a success and my hip that had been replaced was “in bad shape.” Well, I could have told them that.
I was also told I could hit my morphine drip plunger every 8 minutes, if needed. I knew from past experience my brain is very good at calculating life in 8 minute intervals and issuing urgent commands to the right thumb to plunge away.
I was done. The nastiness was done. I had a 12-inch gash on my butt sealed with a row of 33 pretty surgical staples. Now came the really hard part– avoiding the catheter.
A year and a half earlier, I had had my right hip replaced. Same doctor, same procedure, same hospital. Back then, the post-op pressures I faced were related to bodily fluids:
The other pressure, the blood production, well, I failed that also. I was apparently white as my hospital sheet on the second day. My hemoglobin count was low, about the same count one would find in a stick. The kind doctor ordered me two units of A+ blood. This vintage is one Count Dracula described as “Precocious and playful” while being “invigoratingly intriguing to the palate, with hints of currants, blackberries and earthy exuberance. A wonderful pick-me-up!”