Week one of Dad's new hip
From running marathons together to making endless of cups of tea
My dad had his hip replaced last week. Well, not quite replaced - resurfaced. It’s the same operation that Andy Murray had and according to the surgeon almost everyone he sees calls it “The Andy Murray” (Dad thought he was original, I think).
It basically means that instead of fully replacing your hip joint, they trim it down and cap it with a metal covering. It’s a good option if you’re slightly younger (at 60, Dad was at the upper age limit) and gives you better prospects of returning to high levels of activity in the future (à la Andy). Although the long-term recovery is supposedly easier than for a full hip replacement, it’s still a pretty gnarly procedure. They have to cut you open to access the joint and afterwards you’re facing weeks of walking with crutches and not being able to drive.
And while we knew about all of this on paper, it has still felt like a shock to see the person who normally does all the looking after, having to be looked after.
He came out of surgery at about 6pm last Tuesday and we got a call at just gone 7pm saying “go, go, go” which we took to mean he wanted a visit. I’d just put a tray of veg in to roast, so I removed my peppers from the oven and Mum and I dashed to the hospital before visiting hours ended at eight. Although he had his operation done on the NHS he’d been assigned to a private hospital and had his own room. We found him in bed, eating a BLT and clearly a little high on morphine.
By tea time the next day he was home and eating the roasted peppers I’d rescued from the night before. Moving his right leg independently proved basically impossible and he ended up fashioning a lasso out of a dressing gown belt so that he could manoeuvre it in and out of bed. It took him five minutes to walk the length of the (not huge) living room, chanting “crutches, bad leg, good leg” to himself.
Mum went to work on Thursday and I was on caring duty for Dad’s first full day of recovery at home. My first job was to make his porridge according to very specific instructions (seven level spoons of oats, cover with milk, microwave in his favourite weird red plastic bowl, one teaspoon of brown sugar in the middle, a substantial drizzle of cream). Then we wrote up his homework schedule for the day:
9am - German (listen to the Coffee Break German podcast)
10am - History (read 1000 Years of Annoying the French)
11am - PE (physio exercises from the hospital)
Etc, etc, etc.