Six Week Visit

Today I saw my surgeon for my six week post-op visit. Technically six weeks is tomorrow, but close enough. I had some new scans taken to get an idea as to how my pelvis has been healing. After looking over things, I don't have quite enough bone healing to progress any weight bearing. The correction that my surgeon made was on the larger side, so that means that there is more surface area of bone that needs to heal and grow in. There is already some bone growth going on, just not enough to support weight bearing exercises at this time.

The plan is to assess my progress over the next two weeks and I will likely be able to slowly start weight bearing at week 8 post-op. This process will start slowly, and I'll do so with my physical therapist. Hopefully over the corse of a month I can slowly progress the amount of weight through my right leg. The goal is that by around week 12 or 13 I will be getting around fairly well.

I will continue with water therapy for the next several weeks (at the very least for the next two weeks). As I can bear more weight I will transition to land therapy more. I'm mainly using my SmartCrutches and trying to stay out of the wheelchair as much as possible. I left the wheelchair at home for my appointment today! Using crutches is doable for smaller trips, but I still need to be cautious of my left leg and my shoulder to avoid any other injury. The SmartCrutches take a lot of the stress off of my shoulders so I'm able to do more with them then I would be traditional crutches or walkers.

The real work begins

Last week I was in for PT for the first time since surgery. I basically just had an evaluation with my therapist to get an idea of how my activation was and what range of motion I had. As expected, my right leg is very atrophied, but I was still able to turn on everything well (I had been working on activation exercises pre-op). My right knee seems to be a little angry. We're optimistic that once I can get things moving and get some strength back it will settle down. 

I started in the water the begging of this week. We'll just be easing into things to get my right leg back to working again. I think the pool is going to be really great and hopefully help me get stronger. Once I'm a little more confident in the water I'll plan to go to our indoor pool on my off days with PT. 

As I've started more exercises I've been able to move around a lot easier at home. I'm able to use my SmartCrutches around the house. I can almost get dressed without help; getting that right sock on it's the real challenge. All in all, I am getting so much better each day. I have an appointment tomorrow with my surgeon for my 6 week visit. If everything goes well I will be able to start some weight-bearing! 

Post-op Update

Six giant screws later, a little extra blood, a couple IVs later, surgery went very well. My surgeon is very pleased with the coverage he was able to give to my hip joint.

I spent six somewhat eventful days in the hospital after surgery. I had an epidural for the first three days, I'm very thankful for that because it made pain control slightly easier. I had a reaction to the dressing from the epidural (nothing we didn't expect) so it was taken out a day earlier than planned. I had a blood transfusion, of my own blood that I donated pre-op, a couples days after surgery. Then things got a little interesting. I had a big drop in blood pressure (90/30) and we couldn't figure out what was going on. Since pain meds can lower blood pressure, the only option was to greatly drecress them until it went up a little bit. My body wasn't exactly a fan of that and then spiked a fever in the middle of the night, which made my doctors uneasy. By about the next day, my blood pressure went back up, still not my normal but more stable.

I was able to a slowly progress with PT while in the hospital. We started with just sitting on the side of the bed, and then by about day four I could walk to the doorway with my new fancy SmartCrutches. They are special crutches which are designed to take the stress off of your shoulders and wrists. They're great.


By day five I was ready to go home and have been resting appease here since then. We moved my bed downstairs (our usual post-op plan) in the family room so that I can be more comfortable. Sitting up is still pretty uncomfortable and I only do so when I'm going to the bathroom. I'm still on all my pain meds around the clock, but will hopefully be able to back down shortly.

Physical Therapy Check In

I went to PT yesterday to have my gait video taped for the last time before my surgery. My gait is even still improving from the surgeries on my right hip, which is very good news.

As always, good news comes at a price. Recently my right hip (operative side) has been causing me more discomfort. Since surgery I've had little, if any pain in that hip; but now it's beginning to sublux. (Just to clarify, this is not what was corrected in surgery. My IT band is not snapping over my hip anymore, which was what my biggest problem was) This subluxation that I'm experiencing is my actual hip joint moving out of place.

My PT tested my hip yesterday and confirmed that my pain and discomfort is coming from my hip joint. So this is good news because it means that IT band wise, the surgery is working and holding up; not so good news because my joint is now moving out of place.

There isn't much I can do right now for my right hip until I have surgery on my left side. Of course, I'm going to avoid movements that make me more prone to subluxations, but I can't avoid moving completely. My PT recommend sitting on an exercise ball while I'm at home; watching TV, or just doing homework. This is a simple way to gain core strength and balance, which will provide my hip with more support. I'm going to try it for the next week or so and see if I see any improvements.

Neuro Physical Therapy

I've been working with a new physical therapist. He is a neuro specialist, which means he works with lots of patients who have neurological issues, like trauma patients. I don't have any known neuro issues, but the way I respond to different exercises sometimes makes it seem like there is some underlying neuro issue.

My main physical therapist has been sharing my case with this neuro PT for quite some time now to see if he had anything to add. Since I was starting to plateau in regular PT he thought it would be a good idea to have a neuro PT consult, just to see if there was anything else to add.

I've been to see my neuro PT about 4 or 5 times now. He's still trying to get a feel for me, and how my body works which always seems to take a while for others to fully understand. We're trying to find exercises that I haven't tried in the past and that I'm able to do. It's a little difficult because my right hip (operative side) wants and can do a lot more, but my left hip doesn't allow me to do those things.

I've been using this oscillation board which is proven to help with balance and back pain. Basically I stand on this machine and when it gets turned on it shakes, or oscillates back and forth. The goal is to hold a position, I do this with and without my eyes closed for more of a challenge. Here's a link to the kind of machine I'm using, it's not the exact one but you can get the idea.

http://www.vibra-trim.net/VT100.html

I haven't noticed any improvements yet, but I'm not expecting this to fix my left hip. I just would like to get as strong as possible before my next surgery (December 15th) so that my recovery is easier. This is always my goal because EDS makes recovering a little more difficult.

I know I keep saying this, but I'm really excited to get my left hip done. I know it's weird to say that you're excited for a surgery, but I really am. I still can't believe how much better my right hip is and I can't wait to say the same for my left hip. I can't wait to not have constant hip pain, it's an exciting thought.

I've been in North Carolina this week, I go every year with my dad. He has a summer staff meeting here and I tag along and we have a pretty good time. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to go this year, but here I am.

We're in the mountains, and although I'm not quite ready to go on a hike, walking around here even just on the streets is still a bit hilly and defiantly a workout. It feels good though. My right hip is doing really great, much better than last year when I was here. I can walk more and it just overall feels much better.

My right SI joint (lower back) has been bothering me more. It doesn't seem to be effected by the amount of activity I do, which is good and bad. Good because it means I can keep doing what I'm doing activity wise, but bad because it means I can't really control or expect what it is going to feel like. I often plan my life around how I can expect to feel after an activity. For example, if I'm doing something really rigorous then the day before and the day after I'll try to rest and give my body a beak since it's more work for my body than it would be for someone else's.

Hopefully if I can strengthen my gluteus and core I'll get some relief in my back, as well as improve my hip and make it more stable. So I'm going to, as always, continue to work on my exercises and really focus on PT and getting stronger.

Physical Therapy

I went to PT on Wednesday. It seems like I'm making progress hip wise, but my back has been killing me. I'm going back to land based therapy for now and we're going to see how that goes.

Right now I'm really working on my core and gluts. When I activate my gluts it makes my back a little better, so hopefully strengthening them with improve that. On Monday I have PT again and I'm going to use a bio feedback for my pelvis. It's like a belt and it beeps at you when you're pelvis isn't in a neutral position. I tend to always want to lock everything out when I'm doing exercises, especially my back. The idea is that using the bio feedback will prevent me from locking out my back and force my muscles to do their job. It's going to be a lot of work because I have to re-train my body, and my muscles the correct way to work since they've been compensating for my hip issues for so long.

My therapist is also going to video tape my gait and compare it to my pre-op videos. I think that will be pretty cool because my gait always looks better, so I'm excited to see it side by side.

A Little Update

I’ve started sleeping upstairs. My dad moved my bed back upstairs the other day. It’s nice to be back in my room and it feels like I’m getting back into the swing of things.

I’m starting water PT next week (Wednesday). I’m going to do 30 minutes of land PT, then 30 minutes of water PT. I’ll most likely be walking in the water and very simple exercises at first. My goal is to eventually be able to use the water and swimming as my exercise, doing lap swimming a while down the road. With EDS it’s important to keep your strength up, swimming is an excellent way to do this because it’s non-impact and unloads your joints.