Getting to India

And finally we were on our way! Er...

We were supposed to fly down to San Francisco from Eugene, then on to Frankfurt and Chennai.  Well, fog shut down one of the runways and we were delayed for almost three hours getting out of Oregon. We missed two flights to Frankfurt, and the next one wouldn't have gotten us there in time for the flight to Chennai.  For some reason there was not a flight from Frankfurt to Chennai the next day, so we spent the night at a Holiday Inn Express near the airport and flew out the next afternoon through Hong Kong to Chennai...! (I've said this before: when I get my flight itinerary, you can assume that the flights listed are the flights I WON'T be on that day.)

Of course that got us into Chennai after midnight Wednesday night, and I was supposed to be admitted for all the pre-op stuff on Wednesday and have surgery on Thursday the 14th.  So I called my contact Janet at WorldMedAssist (the medical/travel agency that many people work with for international surgery) and got the following email through her from Dr. Bose:    

Obviously the surgery cannot be done on the 14th as she is arriving early morning on the 14th.
We will postpone the date of surgery by a day.

We will take care and not to worry.

Are you kidding me?!  "Take care and not to worry?"  I was amazed that he was willing and able to reschedule my surgery.  What a relief!  I wasn't sure yet if we would have to move the flight home and what all that would entail, but I'd cross that bridge later.  I was glad we bought the travel insurance, since the airline doesn't pay for hotels needed after weather delays.

Here I am in the Hong Kong Airport

Couldn't get there heading east, so we headed west and hoped for the best.


We arrived in Chennai around 3:00 am, showered and slept for a few hours.  The first day I had all my pre-op tests including an x-ray of my hip, a chest x-ray, an echo-cardiogram, and an EKG.  Then we met my surgeon Dr. Bose, (as awesome a guy as I'd been told), and then I was all clear for surgery at 8:30am on Friday.


Dr. Bose also gave us more good news - even though we delayed surgery by a day due to travel issues, he didn't think it was necessary to change our return travel arrangements - we could still fly home on the 25th.

The hospital experience in India was a little different than I expected - on the one hand, I didn't always understand the nurses and attendants, and there are just so many people here, that getting through the hospital for tests was sort of overwhelming.  Maybe it wouldn't have been if I lived in a more metropolitan place and was used to having so many people around.  But on the other hand, the orthopedic ward and my room were total serenity, the food was really good, and the nurses and attendants told me when they were seeing me for the last time that day and if they would be back the next day or later - it was very personal.

The procedure took around two hours to complete and Dr. Bose said the surgery went smoothly with no complications.

I'm officially stressed, but I think it's ok.

Yeah, the last week has been me doing at least two weeks of work at my job (I'm almost done) and this has had the benefit of keeping all my fretting at bay.  This is a classic Angie Move:  if there's something that might be worrisome or troubling ahead, I will just get super-busy with something else so that I can avoid even acknowledging that said thing is coming. 

Now I am less than 48 hours from getting on the plane.  Some of the housework is done, a bit of the packing is done.  And I can no longer ignore the fact that I am a big ball of excitement, anxiety and straight-up fear.

Here's the thing, though: I'm not debilitated or anything.  And it would be really weird if I was not nervous.  I'm traveling half-way around the world.  To have orthopedic surgery.  And my kids are not coming along.  Any of those things would stress me out.  I've tried not to spend too much time with worst-case scenarios (should I write letters to my kids in case I die?) and keep prioritizing the tasks I have in front of me to prepare for the more-likely scenarios. 

I thought it might help to acknowledge the big deal this adventure is by taking some time to write a quick post.  Besides, my hip was hurting from standing a doing housework.  Time well-spent.  Now to vacuum!

For Realz

I will be boarding a plane in one more week!  I am surprisingly not anxious about this.  But that may be because I have a week's worth of work at the front of my brain, distracting me from fretting about surgery.  Work comes in handy like that for me.  I am making decent progress on the work I committed to finishing before I leave on my hip adventure - and I am looking forward to leaving work and putting thoughts of it aside once this week is done.

It was the two-week-window that made this seem real.  I have a list of household things I'd like to finish as well before we go, since we'll have guests staying in our house the entire time we're gone - I don't think I have unrealistic expectations about how clean the house will be (read: not spotless) but I'd like them to feel welcome and comfortable while they're there.  So a bit of dusting, some thorough vacuuming, bathroom cleaning, and general putting-stuff-away.  I made small progress a little each day over the weekend.  And I've got a few tasks I'm delegating to Ted and the boys.

In a couple of days I am instructed to go off of NSAIDS (ibuprofen: advil, etc.) and aspirin, - anything that thins the blood.  I have started worrying about that!  I don't know when the last day was that I didn't take ibuprofen.  I can still take acetaminophen (Tylenol) which will help with the pain but not with inflammation. 

I emailed my work's short-term-disability leave form to my surgeon's office.  I hope they'll be willing and able to fill it out and email or fax it back sometime this week.  I would sure like to tie up that loose end ahead of time.

This week is just going to be slogging through the details.

Things in my life besides planning for surgery?

Ha, that's funny.  As if there are days when I don't think about my hip. 

Actually, there are other things going on. Like the last weeks of school for my kids, which includes dress-up days for Spirit Week and school carnival, but thankfully also a little bit less homework than usual.  Also work, of course, which included a great conference last month, but also news of jobs being eliminated/moved (not mine) which was not so great.

Listen, I have to be honest, much of my brain is focused on this whole hip thing.  Whether it's thinking about pain levels, details for the trip, new medical studies, other hipsters - it takes up a lot of my time.  So anything in my life is sort of viewed through the filter of "how it's affected by my hip."

The kids are pretty happy that they get to see and stay with Grandmas and Cousins and Aunties while we're gone.  So I've put worrying about how they'll be feeling on hold for the most part.  Also, we'll have someone staying at the house the entire time, which I had also been worrying about - but between a conference my step-mom needs to attend in our town to some friends being between abodes, it's just worked out rather easily in fact.  Awesome!

A couple of people that I've met online doing research on hip resurfacing are in India presently - one has had surgery and one is in the next couple of days.  They'll both be gone by the time we get there, but it's very cool to be in contact with folks just ahead of me. 

My husband has been awesome about everything.  I am not consciously worrying (yet) about surgery - but I know it's just under the surface.  I'm glad he's coming along, cause it's quite an adventure.

Evidence that worrying TOTALLY WORKS

I saw a quote recently on my friend Sally's Facebook status: "Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, but only saps today of its strength." In my experience, this holds true.

Yet I can't completely rid my brain of that little superstitious thought that if I worry about the worst possible thing, I will magically prevent it from coming to be.

We sent our Indian visa applications to the India consulate in San Francisco last week. The website says that the application typically takes 7 to 9 business days to process. So when I received an email yesterday that said that the applications had been "processed correctly" and were being FedEx-ed back to us I was fairly certain that "processed correctly" didn't mean "approved" but rather meant "you screwed up so we denied your visas" or even "we're not approving visas right now due to some security concern or other" - I mean "processed correctly" doesn't really SAY anything.

So I worked that thought over in my head for the last 24 hours.

Thank goodness for FedEx - I only had to ward off bad news with my magical worrying powers for one day. Everything has arrived and our visas are approved and paperwork is in order!

"I have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened" - Mark Twain

... It's because of my magical brain!

More information about resurfacing

The Hip Resurfacing Yahoo Group has been invaluable to me - and many others - in learning about the availability of this procedure. Plenty of people are NEVER informed that this is even an option, even though it's been approved by the FDA for 5 years, and this particular device has been used in Europe for 15 years.

This is a more challenging surgery than a total hip replacement procedure, and many surgeons aren't trained to do it, so why bring it up, I guess?

One of the people in the Yahoo group posted a link to a Minnesota anchorman's hip resurfacing story. Don't worry, his name isn't Ron Burgundy. This is great overview of hip resurfacing.

It's about 5 minutes long. If you are at all squeamish (Rachel), just skip minutes 2-3. It's operating room footage. Probably not more than you'd see on your favorite medical drama, but still.

There's post-op stuff too which I was really interested in seeing - he's up and walking (slowly) Day One with a walker.

Anyway, hope you find this interesting. If you have troubles with the video, try copying and pasting the address into your browser. They can be finicky.

India - it's Official!

Sheeze, I can't believe it's been so long since I updated this, but I wanted to wait until things were really and truly official, and then I wanted to make sure I'd told my family and such before they learned about my plans from a blog.

But I am really going to Chennai, India to get my hip fixed.

Ted is going with me - in July - and we have family and friends who are willing to help with kid and home care. So I've gotten to practice asking for help - really, who is good at that? Not me. But I'm doing it. There is a lot of logistics stuff at the beginning of this process - scheduling, flights, hotels, visa applications - but we're almost through that.

I can't wait to have a hip that works.