Welp, it’s been a while. I guess an apology of sorts is in order. I’ll toss out a couple reasons/excuses for the delay and get to the ‘sorry’ in a couple minutes. In my last blog I wrote of how I’d been having issues moving around. There was a lot of pain where my left leg joined my hip. If you are a regular reader of mine you know that the problem was arthritis and a hip replacement was in order. I’ll give you the gory details on that momentarily. One thing I did not mention was the fact that my wife has been dealing with health issues, too. She has been suffering from this crazy type of vertigo and is, in turns, dizzy, nauseous, tired. Always tired. It’s altered her life big time. We think we have (some) idea of the specific issue and the specific remedy, but it’s still a work in progress. She’s been doing physical therapy and has been trying out various meds, but, like I said, it’s still a work in progress. With her limited, I had been trying to pick up some of the slack and it’s been working. We’d rather not be in this situation, but we’ll handle it. HOWEVER…getting back to my favorite subject, me, with my hip replacement creeping closer by the day, I, we, had to figure out how we’d deal with both of us being partially down for the count. I think we’re doing well with it. Speaking for myself, however, I never thought I would be needing to make use of a walker. I’m just, you know, way too cool.

My replacement was about a week and a half ago, January 5th. By all accounts, it went well. I spent a day and night in the Saranac Lake Hospital looking out my window down onto the ice fishermen on Lake Colby. I’ve since had a couple hip-related visits to Lake Placid Sports Medicine and physical therapy is around the corner. Everything looks good. My wife, despite her own health stuff, has been a tremendous help in every possible way. I definitely feel better today than I did immediately after the operation. One of the big problems though, is how much time is spent off my feet. Yes, after a hip replacement you are encouraged to start walking almost immediately, and I have been. But there’s still a ton of time spent on my butt. It’s getting to the point where my butt’s getting sore. Until I did some online research, I thought maybe I was sitting wrong or something. Then I made use of this crazy thing we call the internet to see just what exactly my doctor did to me while I was on the table.

This may have been a mistake.

Okay. I’ll be succinct and not too graphic while still trying to paint you a clear picture. I now know why my butt hurts. The doc makes an incision on your buttock. He then pushes away all muscle or whatever other disgusting stuff is in the way to get to your hip joint. The hip is then intentionally dislocated. Yuck. The section of bone that joins the hip to the pelvis is cut away. It’s a sort of ball in socket thing. This is what gets replaced. The socket in my hip is cleaned out and any raggedy bone and arthritic stuff is tossed. A new super-duper space-age ball is fitted into a new cup that’s been placed into that socket. Then it’s on to the femur, or thighbone, the top of that which has been cut away and smoothed. In inner bone is scooped out a bit to provide space for a metal arm of about 6 inches to be jammed into the inner part of the bone. I made the mistake of watching a video where the doctor used some sort of mallet to hammer this metal arm into top of the femur. I may be a big wimp, but I found it very disturbing and I’m glad there was no mention of the possibility of a mallet prior to the procedure. Once this thing is hammered in place, a new ball is attached to it that will now slide into the neat new socket in my pelvis. The socket is titanium, by the way. Cool. This being done, all the muscles and whatnot that were pushed out of the way are then pulled back and everything is ready to be closed up.

Hopefully, that wasn’t too graphic. But it brings me back to my sore butt. Of course it’s sore! That’s the entry point for all the fun stuff that was cut away and/or added to my person. This, coupled with the increased amount of butt time I’m currently experiencing, must be why I’m having to relearn how to sit.

So, sitting bothers me, walking is still a bit painful, laying down and remaining in a comfortable position is next to impossible. I know one day I’ll experience a decent night’s sleep again. I just hope it’s relatively soon.

This is why the delay has occurred. Again, sorry. I’m going to try writing later today. Keeping any kind of focus is tough. Wish me luck.