Down But Not Out

Sorry I've been out of the loop here, but here's what's been going on:

Over a couple of weeks ago I had posted about feeling a bad cramp in the hip while I was running with the track club. That was on a Saturday. The following Monday is when I went into my primary care doc. The doc I was assigned to seemed nice, and he felt my issue was muscular, but he didn't feel the need to do x-rays, which is probably when we would have known about the start of a the fracture. The following week we took a trip to Disneyland and did other things that required spending time on my feet. Last Friday, I was going about my morning, showered, had breakfast, watered the plants and was just doing some light housework, nothing hard. I was walking between where my bedroom is and where we keep the computer, which is a step up, and suddenly something popped in my hip and I felt extreme pain. Luckily I was just a couple of feet from the computer chair and a telephone, otherwise I would have been stuck. I couldn't put weight on the right leg at all. I called my husband at work to come take me to emergency. His office is not that far from home, but there was a snag... He was pulled over by the CHP because he has an expired license plate. (We've had problems with mail from the DMV being forwarded to our new address.) The cop was a newbie, didn't know the codes and had to look them up, and even though my husband told him he had an emergency the cop was a jerk and told him to call 911. His car was impounded on the spot! My husband called one of his employees to come pick him up to drive him home. Meanwhile, at home, I'm trying to yell for my son, who is sleeping way at the other end of the house and can't hear me. Funny enough, the cats came running...

Eventually, my son does wake up (after 15 minutes of yelling for him.) Once my son gets his bearings, he tries to pick me up out of the chair but it's too painful. DH comes home, and between him and my son, they're able to lift me from under the arms and carefully get me to the car.

At the hospital it's unusually busy. It takes a while but I'm finally seen. The one thing they keep asking me is how come the doctor I saw two weeks ago didn't order x-rays. They asked how the injury happened and I explained training for the marathon. The running and marathon training comment must have gone on the first page because, after that, most every doctor or staff who came in to see me was an endurance athlete. The conversations often drifted to local running events, shoes and which events are next...

The x-rays are taken and come back, and there's no question that the bone is fractured from one side to the other. It's the femoral neck that broke, which is in the hip. Since it broke all the way through, it required surgery. Had this been diagnosed with an x-ray two weeks ago, I might have not been going through surgery. Well, it is what it is. I have a plate and a few screws holding the bone together now, and they say that this bone area is now stronger than it was before, plus I have 20 stitches, well, staples, that come out it a couple of weeks. One thing I wasn't expecting the docs to say is that I should be running with in 6 to 8 months, maybe less.

I was in the hospital for 4 days. They had me on a metered morphine drip that I could control with a button. They called it the "happy button." They had me up and walking in the halls of the hospital the day after surgery. I'm now back at home and getting around with a walker. It feels weird to use a walker but I couldn't get around without it. I'm on a generic version of coumadin (a blood thinner to prevent blood clots after surgery) and another form of vicodin. I have very little appetite right now, but I'm feeling fluffy from being out of commission. My therapy is just walking around the house, some easy pelvic tilts, unweighted leg extensions, unweighted hip abductor/adductors, and just making sure I move my feet around a little while I'm I bed.

Being at home and not being able to do much is kind of annoying, especially since I have time to be still and notice every little thing that is dirty in the house. The house really isn't dirty, but I'm noticing every little piece of dust and dog hair, and my nit-picky side is coming out, especially since I really can't do anything about it. My cat, Lumpy, has been by my side since I've been home. My husband said Lumpy was nowhere to be seen while I was in the hospital. This isn't the best picture, it's taken with my cell phone:

I have to make sure I have that ice pack on my lap, over the right hip/leg, or he'll want to plant himself right where it hurts.

Thank you, blogger friends, for all of your well wishes. It really does mean a lot to me - you have no idea how much.

Song from Thursday, May 15, 2008:
The Space Between - The Dave Matthews Band - Run DMZ

Song from Saturday, May 17, 2008:
Too Legit To Quit - MC Hammer

PEACE