A Farewell To My Hip!

48 hours till my THR..WOW! I guess this is my wrap up post, so I will catch you up on my last few weeks I have been having as well as say a fond farewell to my hip!

Well like with everything in this journey it has been interesting and quite definitely a learning experienece.
I have had a few email correspondences with Dr A with questions I had for him about surgery, and I will share a couple of my questions with you..I mean at this point we all are family and especially for my hip chickies out there I thought it may be helpful ;)!

ME: What is the company you use for my hip replacement parts (which brand??) 

Dr. A:STRYKER  (see www.stryker.com for details)   You will have a Trident titanium cup, an X3 polyethylene liner, a Biolox Delta ceramic alumina femoral head and a titanium Accolade press fit femoral stem.  Obviously, no metal-on-metal composites.  These implants are the best in the business...sufficiently long and excellent track record on the joint registries worldwide.


ME:They have me donating 2 pints of blood to my surgery in the next two weeks..I know we spoke about one pint..will two pints weaken my system at all before surgery. I had two blood transfusion 2 weeks post SDD surgery so not sure if this is why the # was changed?  
Dr A:One unit should suffice, and two would be optimal  to all but eliminate the need for added transfusion. I think you will likely lose a total of about 500-600 cc of blood at surgery and with drain in place, ie, the equivalent of two donated units. this is revision surgery as we have to go through old scar tissue  and it is certainly the biggest of your hip surgeries!

Blood Donation #1

I did donate two pints of blood to myself for my surgery. This time I did it at my local Red Cross and they were truly amazing! They ship your blood to the hospital where you will be at 2 days prior to surgery. They took very good care of me and made it into a pleasant enough experience. I did feel a little icky after the donation, but they filled me up with fluids and some food and then about an hour later I went home and rested. First pint down..one more to go. I waited 1 week in between donations (that is the way they set it up) you can't donate 10 days before surgery.


Round 2 happened a week later. Staff again was AWESOME there, but my body didn't cooperate the same way as the week before. It started off fine but after 20 minutes things started to go downhill fast. Got dizzy, naseaus, faint feeling. They hydrated me, gave me some food,  had me rest back in my chair, gave me a cold compress, but after 2 hours my blood pressure was extremely low, my lips were blue and my skin was ghost white. At this point the head nurse said she was calling an ambulance and I was like, "Um, no!" she expalined I had no choice and that in my condition it would not be safe to send me home. She did try to make me feel better by telling me that grown men 5 times my size who come to donate blood have the same thing happen sometimes..so I wasn't "abnormal". The ambulance came, D and I went to the hospital where I was seen immediately, given medication and fluids and was kept under watch for about 5 hours. My friend Malana was nice enough to snap a pic of the whole experience..for a keepsake..lol!

Thank you Malana for coming to the hospital and making me laugh when I needed it most xoxox!

Since then I have been busy organizing my apartment, so it is post surgery ready, had my pre-op apt which went well, and just been trying to take care of a lot of last minute things...trying to be prepared as possible. Got a bad upper respiratory thingy too this past week and currently on antibiotics..but why go there, nothing exciting to say about that, but will now need a physical day of surgery to get the official OK that my body can handle the surgery.
So 48 hours till THR..I am pretty much scared out of my mind to put it bluntly! It is hard to rally up hope when you have had 4 unsuccessful surgeries, but at the same time I am very hopeful that this will work and I will get back to truly living. Life with chronic pain is more difficult then you can ever put into words , and you can't even begin to understand how hard it truly is unless you have experienced it. I am very lucky that I have a built in hip chickie support group (Love you guys/Amazingly strong group of woman who have been through so much but still stay so positive and have been such a  constant  and loving support system to me xoxox)
My biggest lesson I have learned is to appreciate what you have, appreciate your body, appreciate the small and big things in life, appreciate what you got. On the morning of Dec. 23, 2006 I had NO pain....if i could go back in time I would have given every minute more appreciation. I know I took it all for granted, I was young and healthy I had no idea what was in store for me later on that day. I had no idea that I would be in pain every day for the next four years. At the same time I could be a lot worse and I need to be thankful for the moments I have now. It is important to appreciate your body, your love ones, the people around you, the world we live in..just appreciate!

Dear Right Hip,
Sorry I have been angry at you the past four years! You have kept me on my feet for 36 years even through the toughest of times. Thank you for all that you have done! You will be missed!

Will be back blogging once I am on the other side of this! If you can please keep me in your prayers on Sept 27th, all the positive vibes, energy, and thoughts I feel could definitely help.....well at least I know it can't hurt!! ;)  Thank you all so much for all of your support through out the years!!

Ps. You can check out a post on my other blog about an amazing alternative therapy I have been doing for my hip: http://sj-sarahinthecity.blogspot.com/2011/09/healing-journey.html
xoxox