Last week there was an episode of RPA of a bilateral total hip replacement. The episode is still available on line, if you would like to see for yourself. I don't normally watch medical programs as I don't do to well with the cutting and opening part which is before anything actually happens. I tried to watch the BMHR procedure that McMinn has on youtube but failed to get past the first couple of minutes. I have it on good authority that it is an interesting series of clips (I have a friend who is not squeamish and quite interested in these types of things).
When I got home last week on Wednesday, with my takeaway from work and just about to collapse on the couch, I got a message telling me about it. We'd only just been talking about these types of programs that morning, so I took it as 'meant to watch' tv. In the interests of research, I watched the whole episode to see the bits about the hip surgery. There was a fair amount of unrelated surgical procedures that I had to get through to watch it too! I persisted though and it was actually quite interesting.
I'm not sure that I would have wanted to know that much information pre-op. After the fact it was at it's limit. The cut of the femur was fine, I've come to peace with that part of the op! The hammering in of the acetabular cup using a mallet not unlike the one I have used to put together Ikea furniture, not so much.
The lady having the surgery was probably about 20 - 25 years older than me, so it was a bit of surprise that the surgeon had elected to do a bilateral procedure. The surgeon did say that one of the key reasons that he elected to do it this way was her attitude. Yes, she was healthy enough but attitude was the surgeon's key indicator for success.
The program made it look like a piece of cake. I had a very positive attitude going in and I didn't look anywhere near that good in the first week post-op. It goes to show that everyone reacts differently to surgery and some bodies just handle it better. To be fair, a positive attitude can't make up for the extra two units of blood they gave me before I started to be a bit happier. She didn't have any drug induced hallucinations either which I'm sure made part of the difference! Everyone is different as are their outcomes. You just need to work out what the best possible outcomes are for you and work towards them.
The message really is that you have to have the right attitude going in. You need to try to get up the day after surgery and start rehab. You need to work at it to heal. If you can prepare pre-op to be stronger and more healthy, all the more the better. Give yourself the best possible chance to wake up looking as well as well as this lady was.
I think over the longer term, I have caught up and my walking is better but its probably not a good comparison given that I can't be sure how far post-op she was in the final scenes of the program.
If anyone does watch it from the link above, feel free to add the extra info in the comments and I'll update the post! I just can't bring myself to watch it a second time.
You might want to close your eyes for the mallet. It isn't fun.
That was good to watch the process from pre-op, op, and a tiny bit of post-op, but somehow I still don't think that showed the enormity of the procedure (based on your blog reporting). But you could certainly see that her positive attitude had an enormous amount to do with her success.
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