It seemed to take blooming ages to get back to my life after my surgery. They say that the older you are, the slower you heal, and they are not kidding! Unfortunately for me, I had previously enquired before the surgery about the general healing process, how long before I would be back in the water, my happy place.
“Oh, about a month,” my super-qualified surgeon informed me. So, I went with the maximum of a month — likely three weeks for me, since I can be a very determined cuss.
As my self-imposed three-to-four-week healing deadline came around and left and I still had a very much not healed incision, I began to pout like a teenager stuck at home alone on spring break.
“It needs airing,” said my daughter, a nurse. There I would lie in the afternoons after I had finished all my ranch chores “airing” this blessed thing with a religious intent. Friends would text me … “How is it going, back in the pool yet?” (I had likely told them, emphatically, it would only be a few days after surgery that I would be back to my water, my Zen!)
“NO, I AM NOT BACK IN THE POOL! I AM LYING ON MY ANNOYING BED, AIRING THE WRETCHED THING!” or words to that effect. I was, what you might call, a bit crabby.
“Mother, stop being so impatient!” my daughter tells me, after I sent her the umpteenth photo of an incision that had not yet completely healed. “Healing takes time, and you must give it as long as it takes.” Oh phooey.
Then even I got sick and tired of all this angst over my not very timely healing, and I started to take the rehab thing in my stride. I’d do a few chores of a morning and then strip to my skin, lie down flat on my bed with a fan blowing on me, and a good book on my belly and I’d enjoy the heck out of what one might call self-induced therapy. Once I stopped blowing my own gaskets about the race to heal and just chugged along with my body’s own fixit schedule, (apparently a bit more sluggish than others!) I came to realize that impatience — one of my character flaws I am NOT proud of — just meant that I would wait even longer in the long run to get on with my life and my swimming.
“Health is wealth!” my dad’s nurse friend Carol tells me. Oh that, yes. When I was in England the last time, I did not have a good time, and I always have a good time when I’m home with my people. The worn-out hip was really messing with my mojo and making me a bit of a killjoy. I couldn’t walk on the beach, I daren’t even try and go in the sea. I couldn’t walk the dogs with my friends. I was like a super-crip on leave from rehab; it was absolutely gutting.
There was one day I strolled — limping, but determined — down the beach with my bright-purple walking stick called Barry, by my side. I couldn’t stand it anymore. Once down on the beach, I almost could not make it back up the shingle again. Without Barry it would have been impossible. I came very close to calling “May Day” to my friends up the beach (who were all without exception strolling along with no pain and definitely no Barrys) to come and haul this gimpy whale up the stones. A sad day indeed. Pain, pain, pain. I was constantly waiting for the next time that I could take a pain pill and that is no way to live. This side of the surgery and that grinding, searing pain is completely gone — absolutely amazing, I call it.
Of course, the plan, this year, is to have two large surgeries, because they are so much fun. Umm, not, but I do need the knee replaced also and this looks like a good time to do it, based on nothing more than my deductible would have been met on my health insurance and who knows if I will even be able to get health insurance after this year. Nobody ever says, “Oh yes, please, sign me up for another operation,” but I know I need it done and then I will be at my optimum performance for an aging broad, ready to take on the world without a walker.
I’m the first in my friends’ group to get a new hip and that does not make me proud, but I am glad that I have made my way through the journey relatively unscathed and I can share my adventures with them, if or when the time comes. Knowledge is power and health is definitely wealth.
Having watched some of the sufferers at the joint replacement seminar, struggling in on their canes and walkers, one thing is very clear. Arthritis does not go away and nor does it stop getting worse. Putting off until tomorrow what you can do today, as it were, is not a sound pathway to go in the joint replacement field, because none of us are getting any younger and tomorrow is never promised.
About four years before she died, my sister Rosie got her hip replaced against doctor’s orders. She was on chemo treatment at that time, and they didn’t think it smart to undergo a fairly large surgery. “I want to enjoy whatever time I have left,” she insisted. They keeled to her will, she had the operation and enjoyed the heck out of the time she had remaining, without once looking back. I’m of that mindset. Today is today is today. Make it the best it can be. Even if you have to put yourself on a time out, so that you heal properly and appropriately for your body, then so be it — the views waiting for you on the other side are truly remarkable.
Last week I went to the Blake Shelton concert in Salinas. Not only did I walk across the parking lot without pain, I climbed the grandstands thinking to myself, “I could climb these boogers over and over again if I wanted to!” Inside my head I was so very proud of myself getting through that surgery and out the other side to make the very best of the time I have left.
Thank you, Carol, for reminding me that health is wealth. It is a line that I have shared with others who are struggling with a variety of ailments, not just joints. We are the “health is wealth” club and we are the believers, though some of us take longer than others to get to the pulpit.
