I finally had my left hip resurfaced by Dr. Gross last week. It feels great to have it over with! As expected, the surgery went as well as the first hip and Dr. Gross and his staff, as well as the staff at Providence are still wonderful! I had the surgery at noon on Wednesday, and left the hospital to return home to Aiken (about 65 miles away) on Thursday afternoon, after my occupational and physical therapy sessions.
An interesting difference with this hip was that I woke up that first night with pretty severe pain in my left leg. I never had very much pain with my right hip. I am wondering if part of the reason has to do with the Polar Care machine to keep the operated leg iced. For my first surgery, the Polar Care was going constantly from the time I got out of surgery until they got me out of bed the following morning. This time, the orders were to not use the Polar Care during the night. I ended up calling the nurse to tell her about the pain, and asking to have the Polar Care put back on. She was a little reluctant because of Dr. Gross's orders, but she did put it back, and also gave me a little shot of morphine, and I was fine after that. When I told Dr. Gross about it the next morning, he said it was good they put the Polar Care back on, but he had no real explanation of why this leg would hurt more than the other. I guess as others have said, each hip is different! At this point, I'm off the narcotics and walked 1/4 mile this morning with one crutch. I will probably switch to the cane tomorrow.
I think some people must have overused the Polar Care and done some damage, because the instructions for using it at home have changed to "use it as much as possible the first week", to use it frequently for an hour each time, then take it off for an hour. I meant to ask Dr. Gross, but we started talking about the trochanteric flip approach, and I forgot! I'll do a separate post about that that conversation.
Interestingly, in the group physical therapy session for all 5 of Dr. Gross's patients who had resurfacing the same day as I did, all of us were bilateral! Two guys had had their first hip resurfaced the previous Monday, and the second hip on Wednesday. Another lady, like me, had had her previous surgery by Dr. Gross about 6 months ago, and one guy had had his first hip resurfaced by a doctor in Kentucky. The guy from Kentucky said that although his first surgery was successful, there was no comparison in the way he was treated by Dr. Gross and the Providence hospital staff. As he put it, they are in a class of their own, and I completely agree.