Birmingham Hip Resurfacing

http://www.rediscoveryourgo.com/Product.aspx?Product=BirminghamHip

I just found this while checking in with my fellow Hippies (Surfacehippy.info).  This is what is in my hip.  These guys have been making this implant for 10 years or more and they have the lion's share of the market.  The parent company (Smith&Nephew) have been around since 1856 and they are the largest ortho prosthesis maker in the world.  The designers of the BHR (Treacy and McMinn) are in Birmingham, England, thus the name Birmingham.  Some of the other metal-on-metal prostheses are the Wright Medical Conserve Plus, ASR Resurfacing, Cormet by Biomet, Duron by Zimmer, and there are probably a few others out there, that I don't know of.    

Appetite

OK so it's not at as appetizing as Guy Fieri's tangerine flank steak stir fry, which I'm watching right now.  This is my lunch today.  It's a double-wrapped black and pinto bean burrito, with Colby cheese, and a little habanero hot sauce.   Seth - this might be better than the BB bean and cheeser.  The beans are one of the few preemptive moves I did before surgery.  I knew I would want to have easy-to-make, but good, food in the fridge. 

BTW - the kitchen, which we have dreamed of making bigger for 15 years, is the perfect size.  I can pretty-much spin around on my good leg and grab what I need while supporting myself with the other hand. 

That's my chair!

Geez, I get up for one second and the dog steals my chair.  "I'm the pilot of that recliner, you're the co-pilot, dog".  Yesterday I tried to finish Metroid Prime Corruption on the Wii.  Spent all day playing it.  The stupid boss at the end took 30 minutes for each try and I tried 5 times, even looked up a walkthrough, and still didn't finish.  I gave up and today I'm playing Ratchet and Clank, a little more my speed. 

An update on the leg - My quad feels like it was in a charlie horse competition with the Dropkick Murphies, and that part of my leg wasn't even really messed with.  Actually, it probably was in a weird indirect way, though.  Everything in my body is pretty much back to normal other than the hip and leg.   That's really good. The pain is more like the pain you get in your muscles after a whole day of soccer.  Not a horrible pain.  

99.9% better

So the quality of this photo is not so good, but as you can see, I'm 99.9% healed.  Sort of, not really.  However, who needs more than an easy chair, a warm fire, a cool grabber, plaid pants, pub hat, and a brewski? 

BTW - Please do recall that I stopped the hard stuff about 48 hours prior to this photo. Acetaminophen does wonders for me.

Swollen

This is about 3.5 days post-op and I'm walking around the house pretty well with crutches.  First day home was bad because of the cramps and nausea.  The second day home was mostly about getting the plumbing working, and today I've been blogging, and doing some exercises and resting.  I feel sooooo much better, all around.  The swelling as you can see here is a little wild, but not horrible.  It's expected.  Last night I put a pillow between my legs and gingerly rolled over onto my stomach to get much needed rest (I don't usually sleep on my back).  In the middle of the night I woke up and realized that I could not roll back over with out a lot of pain. Sandy had to help.  But in short, I slept 3 sessions of 2 hours each, the best sleep I had gotten in several days.

Leaving Swedish

Getting ready for the ride home.  6 hours in traffic and rain and snow.  I prepared the car as much as I could beforehand, but there was no way it was going to be as comfy as a hospital bed.  In this photo, I was still pretty unaware of the havoc that the anti-biotics and narcotics had done.  About half way to home, the nausea and abdominal cramps set in and lasted for about 24 hours.  My last dose of narcotics was the day I left the hospital.  I'll take the pain over the nausea.  I could have got some anti-nausea meds, but I was ready to be done with meds.  All I needed at this point was acetaminophen anyway, so why take the heavy stuff. 

Sutures

Sorry there wasn't much forewarning about this post.  It's not only graphic, it has nudity.  Here are the sutures, 2 days after surgery.  Looks a little painful but it's not that bad, really.  Notice the surgeon's initial, JNP, to the left of the wound.  When I was in pre-op, I tried to take the pen from the surgeon and annotate my hips.  This was because my friend Geoff suggested it.  Smiley face on the left one, "NOT THIS HIP" on the right, "leave this area alone" near the middle, (forgetting that I'd get a catheter).  The surgeon knew I was hopped up on goofballs and smiled at me and kindly reminded me that he uses the pen and I point to the hip that will get worked on.  He put's his initials on it and then I guess folks in the OR all come around and say, "yup, that's the hip the patient pointed to".  Double-checking is a good thing.

At the pre-admissions conference, the nurse asked me what I was coming to Swedish for and replied, "well you should know, didn't the surgeon tell you when he sent all the lab work over?", she kindly replied, "we KNOW what we are doing to you, you just need to tell us, so that everything lines up.", "oh, I see".  Again, Double-checking is a good thing.

BTW - the cut is long so that the surgeon can have some room to work.  When you do resurfacing you need some room to dislocate, get the tools in there to grind the femur top, grind the cup area in the acetabulum, and be able to sight the angles and make sure it all lines up right.  None of the muscles below get cut, they just get moved over a little.