The doctors at Presbyterian sent me home yesterday after my de-limping surgery, which, apparently, has a more scientific name that includes the term, “ossification.”
Ironically, I actually have a more substantial limp right now, but they said that’ll just last a few days. They had to, again, sorry for the medical mumbo jumbo, go fishing around my hip for extra bone and, apparently, carving up a man’s leg can cause some temporary mobility issues.
They started me walking almost immediately, though. It was nice to have a different limp than before. In fact, at one point, the physical therapist who was walking me down the hall instructed me, “Slow down, speed demon.”
My mom came down from Ohio for the surgery. After I got settled into a room, one of the nurses was filling out a marker board and asked what he should put in for, “Very good care for me means…”
I declared, “I’d like to get out of here as quickly as possible. Is that weird?”
The nurse declared that he, in fact, heard that a lot. My mom was adamant, as you might expect a mother to be, that the nurses continue paying as much attention as they had been already.
Spoilers: they did.
They also got me out of there as quickly as possible. I suspect my insurance company and I were on the same page on that plan.
I did have to stay a little longer than originally expected. The surgeon wanted to put me through some radiation to try to prevent my hip from growing again and, I assume, to turn me into a giant man with green skin. The radiation only took a few minutes, but the medical staff needed extra time to turn my clothes into tattered rags so I’d be best prepared to return to the outside world. Please consider the following artist’s rendering:
Also, you might think that given the amount of free time I’ve had over the past four days, I’d spend more time designing graphics. You might be a fool.
On the way out of the hospital, we got a flat tire as part of the Lord’s ongoing master plan to inconvenience me. Normally, I’d jump out of my truck and fumble around with the equipment for a couple of hours and then do a horribly negligent job changing the tire, but this time, it felt appropriate, given that I still had hospital wrist bands on my arm, to use my mom’s AAA membership.
Actually, now that I see it written out, a AAA membership seems like a more efficient use of my time than spending an hour lying underneath my truck, even when I haven’t just had surgery.
A public relations associate whose clients include a frozen custard shop contacted me and was a little upset that I hadn’t notified him ahead of time so he could come visit. I explained that I was only in the hospital for a couple of days. He told me he still wanted to bring me some frozen custard, so attention nurses of Presbyterian: I’d be happy to bring you in on this frozen custard situation. If you have a preferred flavor, let me know. They do some amazing things with peanut butter cups over there.
