New Hip -- Day 17
Today was the first check up for Kathleen, post surgery. First she would meet with one of Dr. Lawrence's PA's to basically check her well being, incision, leg swelling, and overall progress. Then following that appointment Kathleen would have a check up with a physical therapist, Mr. Jim Bacon.
There is good news and there is bad news (well not really bad news, just deflating news). Kathleen is responsible for the good news and I am proud of her. Both the PA and the Physical Therapist were pleased with her progress and gave her high marks for being well ahead of the average at two weeks post op.
Now for the deflating news, and I take full responsibility for it. Way back in the infancy of trying to get this hip surgery scheduled I made up a calendar and I would write down all of her appointments with the date, time, and whom with. On this calendar I had written an appointment with Dr. Lawrence, Kathleen's surgeon for Oct. 15th (this coming Thursday). Makes sense, and no reason to doubt the appointment as he probably would want to check her out after a couple weeks post op. Looking at this appointment timing, the fact that it is getting cold in this area, the fact that Kathleen is doing extremely well, everyone including Dr. Lawrence aware of our unique life style and needs, I let my optimism get away from me and started to think on this coming Thursday he would examine her and tell us we were good to go, and believe me. off to warmer weather we would have headed.
Not so fast------------there is no appointment scheduled for this coming Thursday. In fact there is no future appointment scheduled with Dr. Lawrence, at least not yet. We had always been aware that they like to keep tabs on their hip and knee replacement patients for at least 6 weeks and that six weeks won't be up till Nov. 6th.
Having discovered the error in our thinking that we had an appointment this Thursday and would be able to plead our case for early departure and now finding out we do not have an appointment scheduled we did ask when we could expect to hear when her check up would be. We are told that Dr. Lawrence is not seeing patients the first week in Nov. (remember 6 wks is up Nov. 6th) but they would let us know the date of her appointment.
Talk about 'taking the wind out of your sails'. Thus, a deflating end to the day!
Bummer..............
