Pappa Hardy's Musings on Life.

I have been back to work for four days now. One thing I learned right away even though I felt OK during the work day, I am very easily tiring and I need to make a measured return to an 8 hour day. Additionally, I am taking time for Physical Therapy which can be very demanding on my ability to work for so long. Once again I have learned that recovering from a major surgery is not an easy task. It is like, but also much different than a heart ablation. Life is always a new learning activity.

I am coming to the end of my enforced healing time at home. I go back to work on Monday, attempting to get back in the business of making a living. I am still hurting. I am still recovering and recuperating but I guess it is time for me to get back to the business of working. Working is a blessing that gets us doing something productive.

Working at recovering from a significant operation has been a different type of work. I need to get back into working at both now.

Some physical therapist or some doctor or somebody, or all of them, has been trying to convince me that somehow pain is going to be my ultimate friend here. I am not so sure. Since long before I had this knee done, I have been in pain and it is just worst since I had the actual surgery itself.

I hurt at night when I am sleeping. I hurt during the day when I stress the knee. I hurt a lot when the Physical Therapist is manipulating my knee and putting me in some severe pain. They tell me it is for my good. I have having trouble believing them in this regard. I am just in pain, and that is all that I know.

Supposedly there is a payoff coming. I am not sure I believe it. I woke up this morning and I hurt and didn’t feel good. It has been downhill since then. I sound kind of down, because I am. I am having trouble believing that pain is really my friend.

I am just slowly realizing that I am into this rehabilitation thing for the long haul. I have a leg that doesn’t work right and will only work right after I have consistently practiced working it. My recovery will be totally dependent on my conviction to doing what they tell me to do, no matter how painful. This isn’t going to be an easy thing to do. I didn’t realize just how much work is/was ahead of me. This is going to be a commitment for the long haul. From talking to other people who had experienced this surgery, it seemed to me that they were saying by 6 weeks things would be OK. I am not so convinced now.

I woke up this morning from a nice sleep with no hope. I was very depressed. I think I over did it yesterday. I went without ice on my knee and resting for many hours and that did cause a response in my already stressed body.

I kept asking myself why this had happened to me, why I was having to deal with the pain, discomfort, and the rebuilding and rehabilitation of my knee, and why I was up at that time of the day. It was not a fun moment in this process of making things better.

There is hope. I realize slowly but am realizing that I need to measure the pace of my rehabilitation. I won’t be all better at once. It will take me time to get my leg better and to get over this spot I find myself in. I also realize that in the long term this is the best thing for me. I was in great pain and the leg was not doing it’s job.

I sit or lay down on a couch, as whatever the situation demands, and consider what has brought me to this point in my life. Every day and many nights I have an ice pack machine applied to my knee. I am undergoing rehabilitation for past sins.

The sins of which I speak, hard use of my knees, overweight lifestyle, and other such things is not what I had hoped but certainly could have contributed to everything. I have so much to do to bring things back into line with what the ideal lifestyle. The Whirring of the Ice Machine always reminds me of these past sins.

Recovery from a major surgery like a knee replacement is not easy. Every morning I wake up and expect everything to be better and done. Instead, bit by bit and inch by inch I am making progress each day. Moreover, rehabilitation is a hard project which requires me to work every day and make incremental improvements. I am determined that I am going to be fully recovered but this is a new experience for both Bonnie and I. Recovery is not easy.

Several people are showing surprise on the fact that I am in Utah Valley Regional Medical Center on Christmas Day. I guess it is the time to tell this sad tale.

Many people who know me know much I enjoy going on cruises. Many people also know that I have had knee problems and that eventually I was told that I would need to do a Knee replacement on both my right and left knees. Further few knew that my mom recently was diagnosed with cancer, and then died just before Christmas. Now I will tell the tale.

In July of this year I had been looking at cruises and finally settled on doing a cruise in the Caribbean in December of this year to the islands of St. Kitts, St. Lucia, Barbados, Antigua, and St. Thomas. We paid for that and everything looked good. Also, we went past the deadlines when things would be fully refundable.

Meanwhile, we had experienced a lot of medical expenses during the year since my son Michael has Crohns Disease and in late April and early May had been in the hospital a week in Cheyenne and therefore we had reached out of pocket maximums well into the early part of the year and we had a healthy amount of hospital bills that we were paying on a term basis for him. With that we made a decision to get my first knee replacement done this year. We originally talked with the Doctor’s office about early September. Then, that slipped to October. When we talked to the office they indicated that they wanted to do a new procedure on my knee with a new kind of artificial knee. We soon hear that we couldn’t do it in October because the FDA would have to approve the procedure and probably wouldn’t be done until November.

This is where the complication occurred with regard to my mom’s health. We discovered in early September that she was sick with Stage 2 Uterine Cancer and that she would need Radiation Therapy treatments to hopefully survive the cancer. By the end of September we had found out that the Radiation Therapy and my mom was just beginning a journey that would eventually take her from ICU to Utah Valley Specialty Hospital, then to a nursing home.

When the operation slipped to the earliest to be in early November, we had a decision to make. If I was operated on in November, it would be very unlikely that I would be released by the doctor to fly across the country because of the risks of blood clots. It was too late to get most of my money back from the cruise line. We had no idea how long my mother would live but she was not eating and drinking and therefore things did not look good.

Because of the fact that my mom was not doing well in the nursing home, we also decided we would take my parents into our home during this last few weeks of my mom’s life. We moved them into our home in early November. We were able to get the surgery scheduled for December 22, just three days before Christmas. This would allow us to take advantage of the surgery being fully covered by insurance.

It turned out that my mom lived to December 18, the day we returned from the cruise. The surgeon was able to get approval from the FDA for the surgery and the part arrived on December 22, the day of the surgery. The cruise went as planned. Therefore, it turned out that on Christmas Eve I was indeed in the hospital and was trying to recover from surgery.

Today I was operated on for a total knee replacement. While all that was happening, I learned what it must feel like to be a Paraplegic. I woke up about 1/3 of the way through the operation as they wanted me to clear me throat.

The first thing I remember is looking straight up and seeing a green drape that obstructed my field of vision. I could feel what was happening to me. My body would move as they pounded things into my knee. I looked at the clock and noticed it was 11:45 and the operation has started shortly after 11am. I tried to wiggle my right big toe, knowing that my left leg was numb. I couldn’t feel anything or move anything. I tried to move it by will. Nothing!!

Momentarily I panicked then realized that it would be temporary. However, it was a revelation. I am blessed that I do have control over my body movements. It is a real blessing that the Lord has given us to have feeling.

I have found that for me the toughest part of taking care of my parents is sleeping. My mother needs constant attention and during the night needs to sometimes get up to visit the ladies room. We have come full circle, in that I now have to listen for them, much like we listened for our newborns when they first were on this earth. It means you don’t sleep very deep or very long. It also means you are more tired than normal. It is worth it though.