Moving on

A day or two before my freak-out moment, I talked to Keri from Dr. Mayo's office and got a bunch of questions answered. This train is really rolling now.

I don't need a hospital bed after all. Because I'm flying and because Dr. Mayo won't ship a hip-specific CPM (continuous passive motion) machine, I don't need the hospital bed to hook it up to. Instead, I'll be using a knee CPM, which won't give me the same movement that the hip machine would, but it will get my leg moving. And it's smaller, I guess, so I can just set it up on a regular bed.

I've been easing myself into the ferrous gluconate (iron supplements), and so far, so good. I still need to double the dose, but I think it's all going to be ok. I've also been eating more spinach, raisins, fish and steak and drinking more water. Trivia bit: Did you know that ferrous gluconate is used as a food additive when processing black olives to create a uniform jet black color?

I swapped my blood donation days because, yes, indeedy, my blood was going to be too old if I gave it up this week. The ladies at United Blood Services didn't seem too phased by this bit of information when I pointed it out to them. My advice is always, always be on top of your own medical care. Anyway, my donation days are now the 13th and 27th.

My sister booked her flight from Michigan to Seattle today. Tomorrow I hope to have some time to get mine and my mom's booked. The only tricky part is choosing a return date that will coincide with my discharge date from the hospital. Of course we'll be able to change tickets if we need to, but I hope we can cross our fingers and get the date right the first time around. Keri told me to plan for seven days in the hospital, but like I told my sister today: They don't know that I'm totally going to rock the surgery and be ready to get out on Day 5!

Comments

MY PAO STORY said…
I told Millis when my return flight was and so he discharged me that morning. I booked an evening flight (6:30 pm) - so I had plenty of time for all the discharge paperwork.
Beth

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