Tomorrow, new hip #2

As I noted in my last posting to this too-much-information blog, me hip, she be aching a lot. Whether due to lack of meds or just a final breakdown, it's timely as it makes the upcoming surgery feels more like a chance for relief, not something quasi-elective I've chosen to drag myself through.

I've been commenting to people how fortunate it is to live in a time where there are remedies like this. Maybe someday we'll look back at this barbaric procedure involving cutting and grinding and sawing and gluing and implanting, instead of some bioengineered in-situ repair. But not so long ago in human history, and for much of history, if you were in your 50's with rotten hips, you were an invalid and that would've been that. And of course, for many people in the world, that's still likely to be true. So all in all, I'll take the good fortune to be able to have this repair.

If I was headed down the ski jump during my post a few days ago, at this point I am close to the lip of the jump. The best and only forward is to go through with this. I'll report on Round Two when  get back home from the hospital...

Rumbling down the ski jump again

Five days until surgery. Things feel less organized this time, maybe because I'm paying less attention, or doing it while busy, or just making the been-there, done-that mistake. In any case, I've managed to get all the required pre-operative tests, donate blood to myself, and in general cue up all the needed schedule changes and such.

Because the old clunker has reached its end and because in the run-up to surgery I'm off anti-inflammatory medication, this hip really hurts. Much as I am not looking forward to the whole hospital visit and the recovery circus, I'm ready to axe this pain.

Soon I'll be in the more rarified and elite two-Birmingham club. For the first surgery, I was relieved to have discovered a concrete cause for my aches, and I was excited about the high-tech repair, though I was a little overwhelmed by issues of mortality and aging and decrepitude. In contrast, this time, knowing that this second surgery was inevitable, knowing all the steps and procedures involved, and knowing that things can work out well, the threat level seems set lower, more a level meh.