It would seem doctors are in the air for all of us -- my paternal grandmother broke her hip (hairline fracture) about a month ago, and on Monday night, my mom's new "Birmingham Hip" cover broke out and caused the top of her femur to break.
She's in the hospital, you can email me for hospital name and room number, and had surgery on Tuesday night. She's feeling better, is able to sit up and eat and yesterday morning was asking for her glasses! :)
Medical details:
The Birmingham Hip is a relatively new replacement that is a less invasive form of hip replacement. The femur, which is the large bone in the top of your leg, is the bone that rotates in your hip. As you get older, sometimes the ball of that bone gets bone spurs on it and so rotating in the hip bone causes pain. Well, just walking causes the bone to move, so imagine the agony in trying to walk like that. In the past, the only solution to this was a hip replacement, which involves sawing off the top of the femur and replacing it with plastic bone, which is then guided into place where your femur used to go in the hip socket.
Within the last 5 years or so, they've started using this "Birmingham Hip" and my mom's doctor is one of the few who trained specially with it. The Birmingham hip does not involve cutting off the femur, but rather involves putting a metal cap on the ball part of the top of the femur. Because this cap covers the painful bone spurs, you can walk and do normal activities without pain and without having to cut off your femur. To keep this cap on, there is a metal spike inside the cap that is driven down into your femur. When my mom had this done the first time, it worked beautifully and she was pain free not long after the operation. It worked so well she told all her friends about it and some of them had it done too. She was excited to get the other hip done as well, once the first one had healed enough to support her weight after the second one was done.
Well, apparently when the second Birminham hip was put in, there was a hairline fracture in the femur that should have healed up while she was recovering from the installation of the cap. However, she might have been up and around and driving before she was supposed to, which may not have given the leg enough time to heal.
As a result, on Monday night, she was walking to bed from the bathroom and felt/heard a big crack in her leg, and then she fell. She could not move from that position and they had to have an ambulance come and get her. She was in massive pain for about 24 hours until they could get her into surgery. They had her in traction after re-aligning the bone, etc. (which she said was NOT FUN!) which helped to alleviate some of the pain.
The surgery performed was a hip replacement for that side, which is sawing off the top of the femur and replacing it with plastic bone. Her recovery will be much longer than before, and they are looking into some live-in rehab places for her to recover so she can get more help than what my dad can do while he is still working. Insurance covers this for up to 60 days per year, so it may be up to 2 months that she'll be in the rehab place. The upside to that is that she can have round-the-clock care as needed, without having to do so much for herself in the beginning, and my dad will not have to try to be the convalescing aid while also teaching classes this fall.
The downside, of course, is that she won't be at home, but hopefully this will provide for a much healthier time in the long run, with strong, stable legs. I guess we'll just have to see how it goes.
Until next time, this is your not-so-fluffy bunny slippers reporting from the other side,
FLB
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Aunt Nancy Update
Posted by Fluffy Bunny Slippers at 3:45 PM
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2 comments:
K - We read this the day you published.. but didn't comment - We read it aloud to Tom and Sally.. and all appreciated the update!
Hope Aunt N is doing better...
Thanks for commenting -- I was wondering if anybody even cared about it. I'll go ahead and post the update.
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