|
home >
writing tools and books > view
all books > getting hip
Getting Hip: Recovery from a Total Hip Replacement by Sigrid Macdonald
Price $
18.00>> 
 The Experience of Other Total Hippers
Recovery from a total hip replacement is a highly individual experience. Many people recover quickly whereas others are slow to resume normal functioning, or have complications along the way. Before you run to the telephone to cancel your date for surgery, fearing that it may be as hard as mine, remember the old Internet acronym: Your Mileage May Vary," (YMMV). This means that your experience may be entirely different from mine.
Many factors are involved in the recovery process, such as an individual's age, general state of health, quality of bone, muscle tone, and the surgeon's expertise. The basic rule of thumb is that the patient spends five to seven days in the hospital. Post-op physiotherapy initially involves home visits, followed by a progression to an outpatient clinic. Patients whose hips have been cemented may feel steadier on their feet than those who have had the uncemented procedure. People with a cemented prosthesis usually spend about six weeks on crutches or a walker before they graduate to a cane. The uncemented prosthesis often requires more time to heal as patients move from partial to full weight bearing. The recipient will spend at least eight weeks on crutches or a walker. In either case, the books that I read stated that most people who have had total hip replacements dispense with their canes and walk without assistance by the third month postoperatively. But my physiotherapist said that many people continue to use a cane for six to twelve months after surgery, depending on their particular circumstances.
Heal Your Hips: How to Prevent Hip Surgery — and What to Do If You Need It, by Robert Klapper and Lynda Huey, discusses hip surgery although the real goal of the book is to prevent the need for the operation. Despite the excellent advice in this book, Klapper and Huey do seem to minimize hip replacements. They say that the need for pain medication is frequently gone within nine to ten days, and that within two weeks postoperatively, most patients start on crutches and slowly wean themselves on to one crutch. “By the end of six weeks, you should be able to walk without assistive devices and within six to eight weeks you can generally play golf by now," Klapper and Huey assert. No wonder I was discouraged when I was just getting off my walker ten weeks after surgery!
>> Back to Table of Contents
|
