Emergency Room Visit

Two weeks ago I had surgery to replace my worn out hip joint. Wednesday morning I was supposed to visit the doctor for a routine follow up visit, see if everything is progressing okay. At 4:30 AM Wednesday morning I felt a muscle spasm around my new hip joint and a clunk-a-bunk sound and all of a sudden I couldn't move. Well, I could move my hands and feet but that right leg wasn't going anywhere. What do I do? I could holler for my wife, but she's sleeping, she's had a rough couple of days with her own problems, and I am loathe to disturb her. I can scoot down the bed until my lower legs are hanging over the edge, but that's as far as I can get.

About 5:30 AM I hear rustling noises so I know the boss is awake and I start hollering. Eventually I get her attention and we start figuring out what to go. I call the clinic and talk to the on-call doc and he advises me to call 911 and get an ambulance ride to the hospital, so we put that in motion.

Ambulance and fire truck arrive about 6:30 AM. I always wondered why they always seem to send a fire truck along with an ambulance, now I know. It's for the man power. For the ambulance crew to be able to deal with the patient, first they need to extricate them from wherever they are. In my case you wouldn't think it would be too bad, but they still had to get 240 pound dead weight out of bed and down the stairs. The six of them carried me in some kind of blanket. It was a bit snug going down the stairs, but we all got down without incident.

The ride to the hospital was uneventful though a bit bumpy. I always thought ambulances would have a soft, cushy ride, but they don't. They must have rocks for springs. I felt every bump in the road. It wasn't painful, just annoying. The ride on the stretcher into the Emergency Room wasn't much better. I think the hospital must get the wheels for their gurneys at the scratch and dent sale. Bump, bump, bump, bump all the way down the all. It would all be tolerable except that all the floors in the hospital are glass smooth. You'd think with all the pristine floor they could spend an extra quarter on getting some ROUND wheels.

Once they got me ensconced in the ER they hooked me up with an IV (Intra-Venous line) and gave me a dose of dilaudid, also know as hydromorphone. That gave the whole ER thing a warm, fuzzy glow.

Clay from the clinic came by and introduced himself. He was there to assist Dr. Wang with getting my hip joint back together. That was the last I saw of him. A bit later I'm wondering when they are going to get going and the nurse tells me they're getting ready to take another X-ray to make sure the joint was back together, and I'm like what? When did they do that? While I was knocked out, apparently.

My wife drove me home. We stopped and picked up a couple of cheeseburgers on the way and were home by 2:30 PM.

My surgeon was a bit distraught over this turn of events, but evidently thinks she has identified the problem, so I will be going in for surgery again tomorrow (Friday) afternoon.

Hip joints becoming dislocated is a rare but not unknown event, but usually when these rare events happen, the ball part of the joint goes backwards. In my case it went forwards which makes it double rare. My wife wants to know why. I tell her it's because I'm a Martian and we're just weird.

P. S. I hoped to include a video of me being carried down the stairs, but it hasn't been dropped into my grubby little hands yet, so you'll just have to use your imagination.