Greetings friends and family!

Just over a month ago, I limped in to Foundation Surgical Hospital of San Antonio, propped up with a cane and wincing with every step. Today, with my new Stryker titanium hip, I am recuperating at home and astonished at how good I feel. I'm just starting to transition from my walker back to my cane, which doesn't exactly feel like progress, but the significant factor is that, though I have pain from the incision and my leg and backside are sore, there is no pain in my hip. The bone-on-bone crunch of the arthritic joint is history.

After a year of misdiagnoses and ineffective treatments, and then the frustration of being scheduled and rescheduled repeatedly just to see the surgeon, it should come as no surprise that the day before surgery I learned that I was scheduled for a completely different hospital than what I had expected. I had to frantically figure out first, if this was true, and then if they accepted BCBS - fortunately, they do. More importantly, Foundation Surgical turned out to be a gem of a hospital.

Many well-wishers sent cheerful flowers and plants, and many stopped by. The hospital was originally built as a bariatric facility so everything is oversized, like the chairs and doorways, giving it a slightly surreal quality and definitely not my-sized. But nothing is. It seemed like each time my brother Alex called to check on me, a physician or PA would happen to be in my room. So, I would hand my phone to the practitioner and ask, "Will you please tell my brother how I'm doing? He's a physician." Always nice to have a doctor in the family so that you can get the real story - which was that I was doing well. 

Within a day after surgery, they make you get up out of bed, dragging all your various tubes with you, to shuffle about 18 inches over and into a chair, right next to the bed. What a Herculean effort that was! Fortunately, one of those tubes connected to a morphine drip that is quite ingenious. It knows how much you've had and you can't overdose yourself. But is is amazingly instantaneous when you need it! 

After four days in the luxury of Foundation hospital (4:1 ratio of patients to nurses, and they were outstanding), I was scheduled to go to a rehab center. Our Blue Cross did not authorize the preferred center, Remington, so I went to a different center, which I will not name. I couldn't imagine going home at that point and I assumed the rehab would be a magical extension of Foundation. Ha! After about 90 seconds at this place, I decided it would be a great setting for a nightmare scene if you were scouting locations for a horror movie. For example, an aide tried to push me in a wheel chair without first securing my legs in leg brackets. I stopped her to point this out and her response was, "You're too short. We don't have wheelchairs your size so just hold your leg up." It didn't get better. Elderly patients with dementia were parked in their wheelchairs in the hallway. Yikes! Beam me up! I had no idea what fate awaited me if I left but I decided I had to. So I checked myself out, "against medical advice," and the universe responded. 

My brother, Michael, and SIL, Leslie, rescued me and spent the first night and day with me, magically responding to my every request. Dinner? Check. Fabulous empanadas that Michael made. Morning coffee? Check. They ran down to Starbucks and got breakfast tacos, too. Then they passed the baton to my daughter, Stella, who graciously pulled herself away from SXSW in Austin. She quickly readjusted to living in a mid-Century ranch needing lots of work. My dear friend and long-time business partner, Brenda, took the reins next, and we had far too much fun to call the experience convalescence. She emptied numerous boxes while I sat and directed the action. My brother continues to be a terrifically attentive, driving me to appointments, stopping for items at Walgreen's and HEB, and driving me to wonderful dinners at his house - and back - where he is cooking his way through the cuisines of Italy and Spain. I have been pampered. My other sibs and many friends have kept close tabs on me, too.

I did have a scary couple of days figuring out how to get into the home health care system. But again, Foundation Hospital came to the rescue and got me set up. The care I received was outstanding. A wonderful nurse came daily for several weeks to change my dressing and take my vitals. I also had a physical therapist every day and the improvements I made surprised both of us. I can't say enough wonderful things about the home care I received. It was outstanding.

Hooray for Amazon Prime! It's amazing to sit on the couch and order stuff and have it arrive two days later. I got a walker that fits me, and some clever tools including one that reaches items on the floor and another that helps you pull your pants on. By now, I've been cleared for most regular activity but can't bend more than 90 degrees, cross my legs, or twist. No problem. One difficulty was I could not take a shower for three weeks (sic!) and had to wear astonishingly constricting support hose, which I could not remove. I appreciate that they prevented me from getting a blood clot or a stroke so I will limit my rant to mentioning that they were awful and, when I was finally able to remove them, I had to cut them off. You'd think it was blissful to finally take a shower but by then my skin was so sensitive that it actually stung a bit. At least my new-old house has a walk-in shower and I have a shower chair, thanks to Cindy and Steve.

I've now transitioned to out-patient PT, which means I go there several times a week and they are quite rigorous. Since I couldn't walk before surgery, we've got a ways to go in strengthening the muscles that make it happen. When I get home from PT, I collapse for a while. I've done a lot of napping this past month but I'm trying to transition off the heavy-duty pain-killers and trying to stay awake for longer stretches. I am going to try driving next week.

All of this was made possible by the fact that I was able to make an offer, close, and move in record time, so I could return home from surgery to a house on one level. My Realtor, Steve Markham, and my mortgage lender hustled so that I could close in record time (23 days). I'm still surrounded by boxes and I can't do anything with them but look at it all - but it's all here, and it's all on one floor.

I won't be traveling anywhere anytime soon, but when I do, I have a little card informing TSA that I come equipped with a metal hip joint. Turns out that the three most common operations in the US are C-Sections, knees, and hip replacements. Well, I've hit two of the three and since my knees are just fine, I plan to leave it at that. When people ask if I can feel the metal, the answer is I can't feel it any more than you can feel your own hip. It feels perfectly natural and unremarkable, which is remarkable. 

To all my wonderful colleagues at work who have called, texted, messaged me, visited me, and helped me with errands, I plan to return to the workforce on April 21. What an odyssey it has been. 

Life is good.
Debby