Leading up to the hip surgeries, we had a lot of preparing to do. I would be wheelchair bound for a little while, so we needed to get some sort of lever/pulley system rigged up to get me out of the house. Just kidding, we just used a ramp. However, getting ramps for people in wheelchairs is harder than it sounds. We got this woman to come in and measure whether or not a ramp would work in our house. Apparently you need to have a certain ratio of height vs. distance (or slope, for people who are a little quicker than me) and our house definitely doesn't have that. We were like 'oh no, guess I won't be able to leave the house, thanks for you help' until she left. Then we went out and rented some metal ramps and set them up ourselves. My dad, being dad, constructed a wooden box that we put in the middle of the garage to use as an intermediate level so that I didn't just go flying down the ramp and plummet head first into the floor. They then put the two pairs of ramps on it so that it was just wide enough to fit my chair. It was pretty awesome, and I kind of wish we got a picture of them (and a picture of Kyle when he tripped over them on the way to get a beer, because that was hilarious). Anyway, good work Dad. We also rented a wheelchair for me, and bought some crutches.
The next step was more complicated. I had to move from my room upstairs to the dining room/Mom's office/part time guest room. The bed was already down there, but they pushed it against a wall and put a TV in so I wouldn't be lonely. Then they put all my sheets on it, and my teddy bear, then shoved me in and locked the door. No, they didn't, but it kind of felt like I wasn't ever going upstairs again so they may as well have. We were now all pumped and ready to go.
On the big day, Mom, Dad, and I walked into the Children's and went upstairs to the Day Surgery unit. Once again we went through the questions, and we sat down to play some crib. And we waited. And waited. I wasn't even allowed to chew gum, and I was extremely hungry. The waiting room slowly cleared out; the young kids always go first for surgeries because they can't handle the hunger and stuff as well. After a little while, we found out that some kid was carsurfing and came in for emergency surgery. Once he was done getting fixed, it was our turn. So we sat and waited, and got angrier and angrier. Don't get me wrong, I feel bad for the kid. The truth is, he shouldn't have been carsurfing. I was super upset because I didn't ask for what I was there for, and I had to sit on hungry pins and needles because he decided to throw caution to the wind and failed. I stick by this thought, as mean as it is and as bad as I feel about it. Anyway, the situation was worse than we'd figured (or the doctors, for that matter) because around 6, when I was the last one waiting in the room, my surgeon came in. He was working on this boy too, and it looked like he wasn't going to make it. My surgeon was still in weirdly high spirits though, and when we asked him why he told us that the rods that were going in my hips were actually flown in from Ontario. He'd never done this surgery before and he was all excited about it. I remember my Mom saying "I hope you have an instruction manual!" and him laughing, and then her saying "no, really. Make sure you have an instruction manual."
Anyway, because of that kid, I got pushed to getting surgery three days later, on the following Monday. On the bright side, I would get to bypass the waiting room stuff because I was getting admitted to the hospital the night before. The weekend went by relatively fast, and on Sunday night I checked in for another night in Hotel Children's. It was weird walking in and feeling relatively healthy, yet still having to climb into the hospital bed and get my vitals checked. My boyfriend came and saw me while we were there, so him and I went for a walk around the hospital a bit. After a while, he left and my parents left and I was ready for lights out at 7pm. Okay, maybe not that early, but being a children's hospital, you can't really have a party in one of the rooms because there's kids sleeping next door. I spent the night reading and trying to not panic about the next day. I slept pretty well, especially considering my sleeps before later surgeries. That seems to be something that gets worse with age.
The next morning, my parents were there again. They told me they loved me and all that jazz. A nurse came to get me, and together we walked to the back elevator that they take the beds down in. I wasn't allowed to wear my glasses, so everything is a little foggy (ha). I said bye to my parents, and walked with the woman to the operating room. I climbed up on this tiny freaking bed and was positive I was going to teeter off the edge. I got gas again, which is always fun, and off we went.
When I woke up in recovery, a nurse asked me if I was going to get sick. I said 'yep', half leaned up, said 'nope', and laid back down. I was freezing. They put this blanket on me and filled it with hot air, it was actually pretty awesome. They asked if I was doing okay and I said yes, and then asked one of the nurses if my knees were bent. She kind of gave me a weird look and said 'no.' and I said 'ok, cool, thanks.' I couldn't feel my legs. I was positive that I was actually now paralyzed from my waist down. I accepted this as truth without asking anyone, and spent the rest of recovery planning out my new wheelchair-bound life. Then they towed me back to my room. This is where the nurses informed my family that I had an epidural in, which no one had warned me about before. I couldn't even wiggle my toes or feel anyone touching my legs. Kinda freaky when you don't know why. The bandages I had on felt massive when I touched them, but I found out after they were only about a half centimeter thick.
I did way better with this surgery as far as nausea went; I didn't throw up once. The only problem was that shortly after I woke up, I decided it was a good idea to have some licorice. I love red licorice, but I still had the taste of the anaesthetic in my mouth, so that's what it tasted like. It took me a while before I could eat it and not taste that.
The doctor came and told us the surgery was a success, as far as we could tell. The rods went in and I didn't die, so I guess that's really all I could ask for at the time. We wouldn't know if the rods managed to revascularize the joints for a while, so we were to just play the waiting game and focus on healing.
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