One More Sleep....

Surgery tomorrow.

Since I can't eat after midnight, I decided to have a "last meal".  Olive Garden!  I won't need to eat for a week.   Or at least Paul can have my leftovers tomorrow.

I've gotten lots of texts, calls, and well wishes.  For some reason, this makes it seem more serious.  Like, it's really a big deal to be having surgery tomorrow.  Better say "I love you" because you might not make it out of anesthesia?  Yipes.

I have to be at the hospital at 10:45am, and the surgery is scheduled for 11:45am.  Surgery is two hours, so I'll be out by 2pm.  And then....recovery!

I'll be in the hospital for three to four days (hopefully three).

Tonight:
Pack my hospital bag
Gather books and such for entertainment
Enema (yup, I said it)
Relax and enjoy both my last night without a cane, but also my last night with my bum hip.

A Care Package

So my awesomest friend in the whole wide world, the lovely Emily Heck, sent me the cutest care package  EVAR!  A whole box of stuff meant to make my surgery recovery easier.  

Look at all this loot! 

Yes.  Very bad indeed!

Yay! 

I will indeed!  I'll have time for lots and lots of stuff...as long as I can sit.  

As if the present alone weren't enough to make me smile, the post-it notes surely were.  

Thanks for all the love Em!  

Hip Replacement Surgery Video

So, who wants to see what is actually happening with my hip surgery!

I shouldn't have watched this, but hey, I'm nothing if not curious.

Here ya go!

One More Week

It's May 24th, a Thursday.  A week from now, I'll be spending my first night at the hospital, having had surgery at some point earlier in the day.

People keep asking me if I'm A) Nervous or B) Excited.

And the answer is yes, to both.  I'm nervous about having surgery.  But I'm nervous about weird stuff.  Like, how uncomfortable is that catheter going to be?  The fact that I'm getting put under and cut open and having a chunk of bone sawed off it not really the most concerning part. I think it's because it's something I'm not going to experience.  The post-surgery pain is going to be a reality, but it's not as if I'll be listening to them hammer in my new ball joint.

But I'm also excited.  I really, really believe that this surgery will greatly improve my quality of life.  This last week of work was rough.  This next week is going to be even worse, since I'm not allowed to take any pain killers starting tomorrow.  I can't walk anywhere, I can't tie my own shoes, and I'm sure it looks painfully hilarious whenever I attempt to get up from the picnic table at lunch.  It's going to make work easier and life in general much more bearable.

One more week.

"Convenience Items"

I'm trying to get all my shit together before I go into surgery.  One of the items I need to procure is a raised toilet seat.

I am not allowed to bend my hip more than 90 degrees.  Being that we live in a cheap apartment with an equally cheap, low toilet, sitting down on that thing will most definitely bend my hip more than 90 degrees.  The raised toilet seat is also recommended in all the pamphlets they give you on "shit you need at home" list.  So I had the doctor write me a prescription for the toilet seat and a shower chair.  Paper in hand, I waltz right into Alpine Home Medical and asked the Very Friendly Sales Associate to point me in the direction of the "bathroom aides".  (The only way to keep myself from being completely embarrassed at being a 30-year-old looking at bathroom aids is to bring some swagger.)

Very Friendly Sales Associate was sorry to inform me that raised toilet seats and bath chairs are not, in fact, covered by my insurance.  Even with a prescription.  Huh.

So I left without my coveted toilet seat, and called Altius. Turns out that "bathroom aides" are considered "convenience items", and so are not covered.  Forget that I wouldn't be able to effectively use the toilet and follow my doctor's instructions without one.  She seemed very apologetic, and honestly, arguing with the nice lady in Altius customer service was not going to get the company to pay for my toilet seat.

So now I've been scouring the interwebs for a cheaper raised toilet seat than the one they  had on sale at Alpine.  So far the pricing is somewhere between $50-$60.  This isn't a huge sum of money...hell, I could spend that much money on sushi.  But it's the principle that annoys me.  I know bitching about the humanity of insurance companies is old news.  And if I didn't have insurance, I wouldn't in a million years be able to afford this surgery anyway.  But really.