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Getting Hip: Recovery from a Total Hip Replacement by Sigrid Macdonald
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 There's No Place like Home
I was excited to be home and away from institutional settings. However, the transition from the retirement home to my own house was predictably difficult. First, I arrived before the essential equipment, which meant that I spent hours without the raised toilet seat. Since the toilet seats in my house are extremely low, it was risky to use them without violating the 90 degree precautions, but nature called and I was forced to do so. Luckily, my physio at the convalescent home had informed me how to use a low seat in the event of an emergency; I had to back into the seat and lower my body down while extending the operated leg straight out. If I did not bend my leg while seated on the low surface, I would not have to raise my knees higher than my hips. This would enable me to adhere to the precautions.
I had feared that I would have trouble navigating the stairs, but they proved to be simple as long as I went up and down one stair at a time, rather than taking one stair after another. My big problem was that all of the surfaces in my house were too low to sit on. In the hospital and the convalescent home, the chairs were higher. I could raise them even further by putting a pillow on a chair or by sitting on a large piece of foam. At home, one pillow was not enough to elevate my couch and two pillows made me feel like Alice in Wonderland after she swallowed the potion that made her too tall. My pain level increased considerably after I got home until I called a furniture store and ordered two four-inch, high-density foam cushions. I used those for about a month before I was able to return to using one pillow on top of the chair or sofa. I also experimented with taking one of the cushions from the end of my couch and putting it on top of the portion of the sofa that I was sitting on.
Standing for long periods to cook was difficult so I relied on my personal support worker, Sarah, to cook and clean for me. I also continued to think out every task before I performed it. In the kitchen if I were preparing a snack, I would review all of the necessary steps involved before I walked over to the table. Did I have my water? Had I brought the silverware? Was the salt shaker on the table? It seemed silly and mundane to spend time thinking about such trivia, but anything that saved me several trips back and forth on my walker was worth the time and effort.
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