I'm young, relatively (by the time Keats was my age he'd been dead for almost 20 years) but for a few years I’ve had a bad hip joint. For the last couple it's been failing. It has caused intermittent but increasing pain. I hoped to make it to this Winter before having the surgery (a full replacement) and I very nearly did. But in the last three months or so, the pain started to increase in frequency, to a degree, and in intensity, to a crippling amount. Sometimes I could walk smoothly without issue for half an hour or more. Sometimes simply taking a step caused pain so intense I began sweating.
And so in early October, I scheduled surgery for one month later – on November 4th.
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I was admitted the prior day, the 3rd, and stayed overnight before undergoing surgery at 8:40 am.
Hospital rules stated that I had no food after midnight and nil-by-mouth after 6:30 am. At around 6 am, I chugged the last of my water and tried to relax.
Maybe an hour before surgery, a woman came to install my IV and did such a bad job on my left arm, that she moved to my right. It didn't do a lot to ease my discomfort....
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At around 8:30 am, people stopped by to guide me down to the OR. We walked, took the elevator, then entered the restricted area that contains the ORs (altho you wouldn't know it from the decor – the nondescript doors look like they may go to the back of a Best Buy or the maintenance area of a shopping mall).
I was taken into a room where I signed the necessary surgical documents, confirmed which procedure was taking place, and was then walked directly into OR Room 5, on my own two feet, where I laid down on the bed and took a timeless nap. As they say about bankruptcy, it happened very slowly, and then all at once.
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About three hours later, I was back in my room, recovering – and having some hellacious panic attacks because I couldn't feel or move the right side of my lower body. In fact, having the first-ever real panic attacks of my life. Fortunately, as time passes, memory of these is fading, but I do suspect they'll leave scars.
But the surgery was successful. It took about an hour, maybe 90 minutes. The rest of the time, they made TikTok videos with my barely animated body (I imagine; I was out), and then rolled me back to my room, where I’ve lived ever since.
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Since then – I'm writing this on Day 9 – there have been gradual but also substantial improvements. At times the pain was so incessant that it became defeating; now it's a mostly dull but persistent ache with an occasional, brutal Alpine-like spike. But the peaks are moving apart and I'm well along the path to a full recovery.
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In about four days, I'll be discharged and head outside for the first time in a couple weeks. This is an adventure I'm weary of. For the first time, I'll have to walk unassisted on ground that isn't level and take trains that are not steady, on one leg that is barely responsive. But I'll get there. And at least I have time to recover before heading back to work, sometime in December.
終
