Preparing for Surgery

I booked the surgery in a couple of weeks ago after having a lot of long conversations with my husband.   There was a lot to consider for us when looking at our plans for the next three - five years.  The decision process is for another post.

Once the decision was made and the surgery was booked in, there was a lot more research for me to actually find out more about what I could expect and to see what I could do to improve my overall health and strength to hopefully reduce the length and difficulty of rehabilitation.  I know that rehab isn't going to be easy especially getting both hips done at the same time so I figure that anything that I can do to improve my chances has to be worth the effort.

What this has meant as spending time talking and planning with the health professionals that I already work with on a regular basis and finding new people to answer the questions that I still have.  This has meant more physio, an extra session of pilates, blood work at the GP to see where all the vitamins and minerals are at, a nutritionist to look at my eating habits and generally clean up my act.  

I have to mention that I am currently only working part time.  This was all part of the planning process for the next few years for me.  I finished up with a full time job, one that engulfed my life for a decade, in September of last year.  The company went into liquidation and another short term contract took me up until Christmas.  My options at this point were to find another full-time job straight away or use the opportunity to get my hips fixed.  There were a lot more considerations to the decision than that, though this is the bit that is relevant now.  I don't think that I could devote the time that I am at the moment 'looking after myself' if I was working in a full time capacity.  My ability to maintain work-life balance has been questionable at times, though a large wake up in September of last year has really prompted a lot of thinking time about what I want out of life and when.  That said, the point of me mentioning the part time is the schedule I am keeping at the moment, making sure that I am preparing and eating fresh food and spending time each morning either at physio, pilates (two days), hydrotherapy (all three with instructors) and the final week day back in the pool or doing the other exercises that I have on my list from one of my physios.  This morning it was pool time doing as many of the exercises that I could remember from my Monday's hydro session.  

Some super humans manage to do these things while working full time.  I'm not quite sure how they achieve that.  Maybe their definition of full time is less hours, maybe they are just more motivated.  I'm not sure.  I just mention it in case you think I am one of those super humans.  I can assure you that I am not.  A number of the testimonials that I have seen online for hip replacement surgery seem to be either super humans or super sporting people.  It makes it a little difficult for me to relate to as I don't fit into either category.  I get tired easily, take a long time to recover from over exertion, I don't look after myself as well as I could.  Making sure I eat breakfast every day was probably one of the more difficult hurdles to overcome after many years of taking the extra half hour sleep instead.  

The count down to surgery is 36 days.