So, today is my big day. We woke up at 3:30 a.m. to get showered and dressed for my 5:30 check-in at Thornton Hospital at UC San Diego.
Most everything has gone very smoothly and I can't say enough good things about the doctors, nurses, and staff here. I was fully prepped and in the OR by 7:30 a.m. A few minutes of bantering with the surgical team is all I remember before waking up in recovery at 10:30 a.m. with a new left hip. At this point I am truly amazed at how easy this has been. When I woke up I had some fairly strong pain at the incision site and my lower back was also in great pain. This had me a little worried, but the back pain was primarily from lying down flat for too long. After raising the head and knee area of the bed the back pain resolved in 10 or 15 minutes.
I had a general anesthesia for the surgery, as well as an epidural, which is still in my back. There's a PCA attached to the epidural, and a few shots from that pretty much took care of the hip pain. There's still obviously some tenderness and stiffness there, but much less than I expected. I haven't had to max out the PCA (30 minute intevals) since the first hour.
The PT was in about an hour ago and got me sitting up on the side of the bed, with no dizziness at all. I was able to raise my knee and my foot against her pressure with no problems at all. Really, I feel like I could get up and walk right now, but we are going to wait until tomorrow. I seriously don't think that could possibly be more happy than I am right now with the way things are going..