Ice, Ice, Baby

Five days out of surgery and it seems as though it's been five weeks. I'm not sure why I was so incredibly anxious to have my hip repaired because the aftermath is significantly overrated. Take this morning for example: it took two hours for me to shower, start a load of laundry, unload the dishwasher and fix a bowl of cereal. That's insane! The amount of energy it takes to get from point A to point B usually leaves me about ready for a nap by the time I'm finished. I seem to live and die by ice packs so thank goodness for the homemade ones we've made. We found a recipe online, however, it seems to be a bit backwards and the correct ratio seems to be three parts water to one part rubbing alcohol double bagged in ziplock freezer bags.

I had a check up with Dr. Huang yesterday who said everything was looking good. He was greatly surprised that the MRI gave no indication that I had any damage other than a torn labrum. This lead him to believe that he would be performing a simple labrum repair with the slight reshaping of the head of the femur as it was not perfectly round (this is very common in labrum tears). When he was performing the surgery, however, he found that I had extensive cartilage damage and due to that damage, I had also developed a bone spur which he removed. The cartilage damage was why he had to perform the microfracture. He used a newer technique that a well known surgeon in California and he have been using for about eight months and have been seeing excellent results from. I was cleared to head back to work this weekend if I so choose but aside from that I have to pretty much stay parked on the couch for the next three and a half weeks. The brace has to stay on unless I'm laying down, I'm not allowed to sit up or bend past a 90 degree angle and there is absolutely no internal rotation allowed with my leg (which is much easier said than done as zero degrees of rotation is my extreme point of external rotation).

I am proud of the fact that I made it until bedtime last night without any oxycodone (I win our bet Jen) but I still need the Valium for the muscle spasms occasionally. I don't start physcial therapy until week four when I'm allowed to start walking again because of the collagen disorder but a normal patient would have started it immediately, which I would think would be pretty miserable! But then again I also feel like the brace is the only thing that keeps my leg from just flopping around at the hip so maybe normal people don't have that sensation either.

Well it seems to be nap time again so until my next post, feel free to send some energy my way!