Grandma Update one

Hi, everybody! I wanted y'all to know how Marie was doing. As you know, she had a total hip replacement on her left hip last Tuesday. They started on her about 11:45am, and at about 12:45pm the surgeon had completed the surgery, had cleaned himself up with a new set of scrubs, and was in a waiting-room conference room with me, explaining that everything had gone okay with Marie.

Dr. Vaughn is the surgeon, and he is known for doing excellent work, and also for being a very fast worker. He “opens up, does the job, and closes up” as well as, and faster than, nearly every other surgeon! The actual operation, if you can believe it, took only a little more than 45 minutes!

Marie was up and walking around the morning of the next day – Wednesday. She used a walker, pushing the walker ahead of her, then leaning on the walker as she caught up to the walker. But the next day (Thursday) when she went on her walks around the hospital, she was going up and down the corridors, almost at will, and some of the time she was just lifting the walker completely off the floor, and just carrying it in front of her as she walked! (I’m not sure that is the approved way for a patient to use a walker, but she said she didn’t need the support, and it was faster that way!)

She did so well that, when the surgeon came around to talk with her Friday morning (this was less than 3 full days after surgery!) he decided she could go home if she wanted to, even though she had expected to stay in the hospital for 4 days “if everything goes okay”.

So she came home Friday (it was noon before the paperwork and stuff was completed), and she has been continuing to do very well. She even talked some of trying to go to Sacrament Meeting yesterday (Sunday) morning, but my son, Stephen, who is visiting with us from Oregon, and I talked her out of that, feeling she really wasn’t quite ready yet. But she IS doing extremely well.

Her spirits through this whole process have been so high, she was so enthusiastic and everything, that it is easy to forget that the healing process has not yet been completed! She is NOT pain-free, for example. She takes pain medication every 4 hours, and if she forgets or tries deliberately to go without it, or to lengthen the time between doses, then she suffers the result when the pain returns. But this is getting better all the time, and we are so delighted and impressed with how she is doing that I wanted to share it with

Her left hip can really hurt if her leg is handled carelessly, so when we prop it up with pillows (recommended by the rehab lady who came to the house Saturday morning), we must do so very carefully. She must sleep on her back or on her right side, and moving or rolling over must be done very carefully to avoid pain. I’m getting better at helping her like that.

She can shower carefully, but no baths because (a) it’s too hard to get in and out of the tub, and (b) she is not allowed to “soak” her stitches until they have completely healed. Speaking of stitches, I think it is staples and not stitches, but what the heck! They’ll probably be removed on June 3rd, which is when she goes back to her doctor for a checkup.

Her scar is only about 4 inches long! How the surgeon was able to get in there and do his job through such a small opening is something that I simply cannot understand.

I’ll include a photo here of Marie here – it was taken the 2nd day after surgery, as she walked down the hospital corridor at Rex Hospital.

Well, that’s “it”. Marie asked me to send you sisters a report on her progress, and I can’t think of anything else to say.