Surgery on Friday, Home on Saturday

Here he is waiting for surgery on Friday morning...about 6am.
This picture was yesterday evening back in his room.

This is Buddy walking today....sorry I missed getting pictures of him in his hospital gown, but I was busy following along with the IV pole. These pictures are after all tubes and drains were removed and we're getting a final OK from the PT lady. How do you like the thigh high hose....well, on Buddy there a lot longer than just thigh high. And he's got to wear them for a month.


He also had to practice on the stairs going up and down. Up with the good foot and down with the bad.

The ride home was pretty rough. We couldn't get the seat positioned where the pressure was off the incision. It was a LONG ride home and he felt every bump. Our good friend met us at the house to help get him in and settled and moved a chair from the living room to the den.

It's kind of hard to believe that just yesterday morning we were leaving for the hospital for Buddy's hip replacement and now at 5pm on Saturday we've been home over an hour and he's tucked into bed and eating a snack.

Surgery went well although it was not without challenges that we were of course not expecting. Due to the length of time that Buddy's hip has had this condition, the muscles and hip socket were so tight that what was originally to be a typical hip replacement turned into "Plan B".

His surgeon had to make a longer incision...not the 3 1/2 inches we'd hoped for but more like 8 or 9. In fact, his incision looks more like the one my father had with his first hip replacement about 30 years ago. It's stapled closed. Ouch!! He even had to cut a tendon in order to be able to pull those stiff muscles aside and later reattached it. The amount of femur that had to be cut off including the head was more than was typical due to the deformed shape and when the prosteses was driven into the femur, the cut off end of the femur began to split so the Dr. had to put a band around the top to stablize it. Because of the excessive stress to the muscles and hip in general, his Dr. was afraid that there was a chance that a medical condition....I can't remember the name of it, would occur where the body begins to make too much bone to "fix" everything. In order to stop that from happening, Buddy was taken to the oncology/radiology part of the hospital, had a CAT scan, marked for radiation and was given one dose of radiation to prevent bone from growing in the areas where it shouldn't grow. In other words, the bone could possibly grow up in the socket rather than just around it and potentially "freeze" the joint.

After all of that, he got up and walked around the nurses station last night and is home today.

Thank you God for your wonderful healing powers. Please continue to pray for us in the days ahead.