Help my husband recover from his operation (Sept 09) and regain full fitness

Hubby has now finished his course of physio and hasn’t been on his crutches for weeks.

He’s fitter and better than he was for ages before the op and that’s great to see :)

He’s been doing his physio every day before work and now only needs to see his physiotherapist once a week.

He’s off his crutches but isn’t out of pain or discomfort, although it’s a lot better and appears manageable.

He doesn’t want to talk about it much – and I don’t blame him!

He’s started his regular physio now and has been told that he must use one crutch indoors all the time no matter how short the distance and two crutches outdoors. He wasn’t too happy about this but apparently as it’s so soon after the op he could do some damage if he doesn’t keep some weight off his hip. It was too early and he’s been trying to do too much.

I guess it’s damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

He’s also been given more physio exercises to do at home. He’s doing them all bar one – this one has really hurt his other hip (it’s been a bit dodgy for a while but hasn’t needed surgery – yet).

He was on some great anti-inflammatory tablets early on but these can only be taken for a week at a time otherwise they can damage the kidneys. Now he’s come off them the initial rapid improvements have to some extent been lost but not totally. He’s in quite a bit more pain than he was in when I wrote my last post.

It’s really frustrating for him to have good improvements so early on and for them not to stay so he appears to be moving backwards.

He had his stitches out today and is managing to walk about using just one crutch outdoors and is trying not to use any indoors. His anti-inflammatory tablets seem to be helping his recovery – rapid improvement started a day or so after he restarted taking these.

We’ve been going for short walks around the village and he goes back to work on Monday. He’s going in to his office to see how the commuting etc goes and has the opportunity to work from home if the commute is too much right now.

Things are going well considering his op was only 10 days ago. Thanks for all your good wishes.

It’s just over 3 years since his last hip op and he has said that the post-operative pain is much worse than he remembers from last time. The surgeon was more aggressive (won’t go into details) as it had recurred sooner than he expected (think the surgeon hoped it wouldn’t recur – as we did).

I collected him yesterday from hospital and drove him home. He had difficulty getting out of the car as he was so stiff from sitting down for so long.

He has a couple of weeks off work sick but can take longer if he needs to and he can also work from home which will mean not losing any pay after his 100% sick pay period ends in 3 weeks time.

Last time we lived in a flat (which is a fantastic description really as everything is on one level and the place is, well, flat!). Now we live in a house and hubby has confined himself to upstairs – the main bedroom and bathroom are next door to each other – to make it a bit easier for the first few days.

He’s doing his physio but even with the super-duper painkillers they gave him on discharge his face contorts and goes white when he’s doing them. It’s early days though

I’ve the rest of this week and all next week off work so I can help him out. He’ll need support.