I'm Back!!!

So, one wedding and a new hip joint later, I am back. It seems ages.

I didn't make it to my grand-daughter's wedding. I will always regret that. But thanks to digital cameras and many personal accounts of the event, I feel didn't miss it completely. There was never a real possibility that I would make it but I didn't know that.

I've been urged to write about my hip joint replacement. I was not eager.

In the first place, my experience may not be like others. Secondly, the surgery is only the first part of the process. Success apparently depends on months of physiotherapy that follows. It is not yet complete.

The pain of arthritic degeneration has vanished. There is no pain in the hip joint. But muscles forced into action after who knows how many years of disuse are not quiescent.

Dire warnings if I lean this way or bend that. Blood clots are a significant postsurgical hazard. The drug to combat blood clots has serious connotations in its own right.

Pain killers make the physio painless. Pain killers are powerful and therefore addictive. That's not good.

Every day I hear of someone whose life was turned around after the surgery but it took months. How many months? Am I slower than others? If I am, why am I?

I am doing the physio, but I was never good at exercise routines. Am I doing it right? If I'm not, am I doing more harm than good?

Yesterday I learned the therapy cannot hurt the new hip joint Only the muscles are being impacted. So, every day I learn something new and positive.

I am at home in my own bed. I make my own breakfast and lunch. I look out at my own garden and sit out on the deck. I have supportive friends and family and never in my whole life have I appreciated them so much.

A pleasant, serious and sensible therapist comes to my house once a week to give me instructions and support.

If I do not recover and be in better shape than I was before, it will be no one's fault but my own.

But that will not be a comfort.