So Far Away...

I keep telling myself, it will be here before I know it. But wow, March 29th is a long time away. Not only is the surgery a long time away, but I have no family living close except my husband. I am having some family come in town to help out, but I really hate asking for help. I feel like I was able to get through a total hip replacement before with no help by family, so I should be able to get through this. But then I feel like that wouldn't be very fair to my husband now would it?

He is a wonderful caregiver/caretaker. Boy can I tell you some stories about my hip replacement. He had to do things for me that are never mentioned in your vows. Well, maybe loosely when you say "in sickness and in health" and stuff like that. Who would have thought that sickness would have included a brand-spankin' new state-of-the-art hip, titanium and ceramic, top of the line--set the insurance company back about $26,000. Now, off the subject a bit, does that mean that my net worth goes up? Just a question. So with this lovely new hip comes a not so top of the line walker. I did not get the best of its kind. I got the least expensive, fold-down type to be able to put in the back seat or trunk for easy travel. So back to what Jim never knew he was getting himself into...

Here I am just 48 hours post-op, and the surgeon discharges me to home. I was ecstatic. About what? Well, home I guess. But I wasn't gonna sleep in my own bed because I couldn't make it up the steps to the second floor to get to our bedroom. Instead, I got to sleep in our wonderfully uncomfortable sofabed. Also, something to look forward to was the fact that we did not have a full bath on the first floor, so no shower for me for a while, quite a while. Turns out, it took me a long time to rehab my way up those steps to the second floor. I had a lot of sponge baths. They are just not that sexy when given at home by your husband after 3 and a half years of marriage when you just had a total hip replacement at age 29 years. There is just nothing sexy about that. Jim did help me wash my hair in a water basin. He somehow thought that he could just shampoo my hair, and towel dry it, and then just comb or brush through it without any problems. Well, he learned really quickly that a woman needs conditioner, lots of conditioner! Wow, he thought, I can brush through that stuff you call hair finally!

Then after I mastered going up the steps, one step at a time, not alternating feet. Right foot, then left foot to the same step!!!!!! Yeah, I was getting nowhere fast! I finally made it to the second floor. Now I was going to get a long deserved shower. I had to have a chair placed in the shower because I couldn't stand for that long. So the question came out of my mouth. Do you think you could shave my legs? He thought about it. Why would I need to have my legs shaved? Was it for him; he didn't care if I looked like an orangatang. I think it was more for me. I just wanted to feel feminine again. So he reluctantly said yes. He took off his clothes and squeezed into our tiny stand up shower stall. Then, he slid down the shower wall until he was sitting on the ground. Then, he was literally squatting on the shower floor with my Intuition razor. He shaved my legs while the shower sprayed him in the face. He was clearly uncomfortable, but he continued to shave my legs everytime I asked him for about 4 months.

After that I came up with an incredibly amazing invention, which Intuition should totally patent. I bought a sponge with a handle and cut off the sponge. Then I took the Intuition razor and used about 5 hair rubberbands and wrapped them around the handle to apply the razor to the handle. Voila! An Intuition razor on a stick!!! Perfect for those hard to reach areas, like legs! For me, I couldn't reach anything yet.

I couldn't even sit comfortably at the kitchen table yet. I felt like when I sat at the table and leaned forward to eat something off my plate, that my hip wouldn't allow me to bend that way yet. So, it took me forever to feel comfortable, both physically and psychologically, to go out to eat at a restaurant. I felt like I needed to sit all the way up toward the table and have something propped against my back. That way, I would never have to actually lean forward. I was already forward and leaned over my plate. My hips didn't have to move at all.

So for me, to revisit a replacement surgery, makes me revisit every single part of that first surgery--smells, tastes, feelings. It is hard to be in pain. But it is also hard to kind of know what to expect, and fear that all over again.