Surgery in Mexico

The Operation


The day finally arrived and checking into the hospital was pretty quick, we arrived at 10:30 am and by 11:30 I was in the prep stage of the operation. One by one the surgery team arrived and within 30 minutes or so we were having a good time. I had baked 3 dozen cookies a few days before and brought them along sharing with the staff along the way. I highly recommend this tactic (unless you are a terrible baker) as it certainly built some valuable lines of force.

By 12:30 I was being gradually sedated and by 1:15 I was yawning and dosing off. Being wheeled into the operating room was somewhat surreal along with what followed. My primary sedation was from the hips down with secondary sedation for me to sleep. There was also a shield so I could not see the work being done. In this semi-conscious state I felt nothing, no pain, but there were moments when I heard what was going on as if I was in a room next door. I could hear the pounding of a hammer on the prosthesis as it was being driven into the tibia, but again, I had no feeling of it. At one point I opened my eyes and saw the anesthesiologist and asked him for a drink of water, but again it all took place without full recognition of where I was and what was happening. I write this 2 full days after the operation and I still have felt no pain. Perhaps once I start my rehab this will change.

The hospital staff has been amazing along with the food, and the accommodations are well appointed (although the TV’s could use an upgrade). I am scheduled to be home on Thursday. I have had a good number of visitors both in person and online for which I am so grateful. My partner Ethel has been amazing too and will be “nursing” me back to health over the next few months. Thanks to everyone who has made contact and provided surround for this event.

My Mexican Medical Odyssey (or “How I came to Mexico to have my hips replaced”)

I wasn’t particularly surprised when I got the news, none the less fear did rise up in me. I have never had an operation in my life. It has been my belief for many years and it is confirmed these days statistically, that people die in hospitals! What I mean to say is that people die because of various negligence’s of patients while they in the hospital. Bad diagnosis, wrong treatment, poor professional work, drugs and the list goes on with probably the most prolific cause of people dying in hospitals is from something different from what they initially went there to be treated for. Go in for stitches and come out with staff infection. Those are reasons I have avoided hospitals my whole life. Now I am looking at an unavoidable circumstance.

In 1995 I was in a pretty serious car crash where I exited unscathed, or so I thought. I did miss 3 months of work, but I had no broken bones just the physical trauma of being in a head on smash. My muscles were stiff and soar to the point where I could not exit a bath tub after returning home from the emergency room. During my massage and chiropractic rehabilitation was the feeling in my left hip that it was not quite all together. It was like a knuckle that needed to be cracked, pulled on and put back in its rightful place.

By 2001 I was experiencing some odd symptoms with numbing pain in my buttocks that ran down my left leg to the knee. I went and had x-rays which revealed nothing conclusive from the doctor’s standpoint. Because the occurrences were scattered and not continuous, I “powered through” with exercise and activities, and while I was not inhibited anymore, it was there in the background, that feeling of a chip or something in the hip. A chip in the hip.

In February of 2009 things began to change. I was still walking everyday, but I was noticing more and more stiffness in both my hips, but mainly on the left side. By August of 2009 I had to give up daily walks. The pain was inhibiting movement as well as increasing in intensity.

The news I received came as a result of simple x-rays. One glance at the x-rays by the orthopedic surgeon and the definitive statement he made, “you need both hips replaced” was both alarming and calming at the same time. I finally received a diagnosis that was definitive and concrete; even I could see in the x-ray the bone on bone contact in my ball and socket joints, the source of jolting pain as well as numbing radiant agony keeping me from sleep.

That was the calming part. The alarming part was the idea of having part of my bones hacked out, the extended recuperative down time and how am I going to pay for it?

Next blog .... Health insurance in Mexico