Day 2

Another 4am wakeup call, this time for pain meds.  Beginning of day two, the first day of physical therapy.  Before we get to physical therapy, the time has come to change the original dressings from the surgery.  After changing my clothes at least four times yesterday because of the oozing coming from my bandages I was very happy to clean myself up with the help of my mom and get some fresh bandages placed on my two incisions.  Luckily, it appears that I am almost done oozing today.  However, I will tell you I never thought that changing bandages could be so exhausting and take forever! 

After all of the stripping of tape and gauze and placing new fresh bandages, now I’m ready for my first physical therapy session.  I don’t think I really believed they expected me to be in physical therapy the day after surgery until I actually got there.  This brings me to my first piece of advice for the day: taking the stairs.  There are two stairs leading from my kitchen to the garage that I have to take to get to the car.  This obstacle brought me to tears for the first time during my recovery.  Just remember “up with the good down with the bad”.  By this I mean when going down the stairs put the crutches on the step below and bring the “bad” foot down first then follow with the “good” foot.  Hopefully this will save you from sheading the same tears that I did this morning.

Once I finally got to physical therapy, it was pretty easy so to speak.  I give all the credit to my mom for finding a wonderful physical therapist so that I could be confident that I put the rehab of my hip in the right hands, literally.  The first day is all about the initial assessment and passive range of motion.  I credit the good results I had during my first session to the many months I spent in physical therapy while I was at college, waiting to have my surgery.  It is important to keep the muscles around the injury strong in order to have a good foundation after surgery.  Another important lesson I took from physical therapy is that 90 degrees is bad.  This should make sense for those of you who have a labral tear, but to clarify, it is important to keep the leg “open” or at a degree less than 90 and preferably less than 70 degrees.   Maintaining the leg in this position helps to protect the surgical work that has been done in the hip.

My first session of physical therapy took everything out of me, so I came home and decided to take a nap while lying on my stomach.  This position is outlined in the recovery packet provided by Dr. Petre in order to stretch out the hip flexor so that it doesn’t become tight and inflamed.  With that I pretty much wrapped up my eventful day.