Healing Together

Dispatches from my Mom's Hip Replacement Surgery alongside my ACL Journey

Hello, and welcome back, friends and readers. You’re in for a family affair in this week’s edition, in which I continue to embarrass my mother!

As mentioned in my previous post, last week I was traveling up to the Northeast to support my mother through her hip replacement surgery. It's a big surgery, and my mom was pretty anxious about it given that she had seen firsthand how much I struggled with my own operation and recovery.

Mom's Recovery: “Too Good for Her Own Good?”

Everyone who has asked me how my mother is doing: in a sentence, “She’s too good for her own good!” She's using a walker for stability until she clears the milestone of her first post-op appointment—and, of course, hates using it. She's been diligent about icing her hip and eager to get up and moving to manage the stiffness she's feeling.

No heavy painkillers, some bruising down at the foot, but she's "doing really nicely," to use her words. I supported her through the operation and her first few days post-op. Since then, her friends have all been making house calls, driving her on errands, and been loving and supportive during this time when she's operating in a less self-sufficient way.

Surgery Spotlight (Pictures Below):

1. Walking on the treadmill before her surgery.

Not pictured: also walking for miles the day before her surgery AND to the hospital before the surgery

2. The awesomeness of her care team

The female nurse’s name was Jasmine and my mom kept insisting Jasmine was something of a Disney princess throughout caring for her. I’d have to agree from what I saw. She was awesome.

3. Bringing my mom the first of her many ‘get well soon’ flowers.

Technically two bouquets of get well soon flowers: sunflowers from Trader Joe’s and a baby bouquet from Whole Foods. I had nothing better to do when waiting for her to finish surgery than to go food- and flower-hunting

4. Getting settled at home with her two poodles, serving as "therapy dogs"

Recovery be damned. Leave it to the lapdog to still take his place where he wants to be—on a lap.

Thinking back on my own recovery and wishing I had taken more pictures of the before/after and had videos of progress, I decided to mildly embarrass my mother and take that effort unto myself for her.

My mother might not have loved my doing this in the moment, but in hindsight, I would have wanted someone to do this for me when I was in my early days of recovery. By the time Thanksgiving dinner comes around in six weeks’ time, I have reason to believe she'll thank me for having documented this moment. It’ll be another thing she’ll be grateful for: a way of looking back on how far she's come, the pain in her hip transformed into pride in herself.

My ACL Recovery: 5.5 Months Post-Op

On my side of things, here's where I'm at in my own ACL recovery 5.5 months out:

Strengths & Improvements

• Lateral movement is improving and feeling stronger: Lunges are getting more comfortable and less "crunchy." I’m obviously not doing speed-skaters or agility drills with hard pivots yet, but being able to do a big step and lunge with gusto is serious progress.

• Walking more confidently in aggressive situations: I was nervous about walking in and around New York City when I came to visit my mom and run errands for her while she was in the hospital. With people on their phones, crazy bikers, urgency, and crowds, New York is a place where you have to trust your ability to move, or else you’re getting bumped into run over. My leg was achy and swollen, but it "survived" all the reps and many steps, along with the nonstop dodging of couriers and distracted pedestrians.

• Kneeling isn't horrible: Kneeling isn't bad, but sitting all the way back on my heels is still stiff and a bit asymmetrical. I'm close, but still "need the blanket" for child's-pose-level terminal flexion.

Ongoing Challenges

• Quad strength and control remains to be desired: Eccentric motion, strength, and control are still lacking. Descending stairs, absorbing shock on a single leg, and controlling small hops makes my knee cranky. Leg extensions are still very painful and I can’t do them with anything but bodyweight and a BFR device.

• Mobility and flexibility need work: I miss the days where stretching was something I could do more intensely—and was something looked forward to rather than dreaded. I know I need to stretch my hips, quads and hamstrings more. 90-90 stretches have become more comfortable in the last few weeks. Butterfly stretch on the operative side requires "trusting" my hip mobility and using a blanket for cushioning to letting my body relax into the position.

New Adventures

Outside of the ACL specifics, what's noteworthy:

• I left my previous job and started a new one this past week. Based on the culture of the new gig (still remote, but true 9 to 5 meeting hours and on eastern time), I think my recovery and overall lifestyle is going to improve tremendously. As I've written before, I think my previous job, for both mental as much as physical reasons, probably slowed down my ability to heal. The on-call lifestyle, project stress, and uncertain org dynamics made it hard to prioritize my recovery adequately.

• Outside of ramping up in the new job, I’m busily packing for my honeymoon to Japan, which is under two weeks away! After managing to navigate New York City without too many issues—save for needing a little extra ice and ibuprofen—I’m optimistic that I’ll be able to enjoy doing what I most love to do while my husband and I are traveling in Japan: walking around and exploring new places.

I couldn’t be more excited for these new chapters in both my mom's recovery and my own. Recovery is ongoing and far from done, but it’s now startgin to feel like the dog days of the ACL grind are over.

These dog days, however, don’t stop. Here, Snickers is pictured in her Howl O’ Weenie pajama costume. It’s a boo-tiful getup.

Thanks for following along.

See you next week,

EZ