then and now

Tomorrow morning one of my best friends goes into surgery on her ankle.  Today we spent breakfast and lunch talking about it (her surgery) and my hip replacement.  As I was doing some errands, waiting on a stoplight to change to green, I realized that my hip replacement was the first surgery that I had been treated like an adult.  Granted, the nurses had no idea in the world how to treat me otherwise, considering they were all used to patients at the youngest fifty for a joint surgery.

As I've mentioned in posts past, the surgeries I've had pre-hip were done at a children's hospital where they are obviously very used to working with kids and now the tricks on how to keep them calm and things like that.  The nurses comforted me in a way that I knew things would be okay and my parents were only at a short word away.  When I had my hip replaced, I can remember clear as anything when I started to come out of anesthesia , I started crying because I wanted my mom, naturally as you do when you come out of a major surgery intended for an old woman instead of a seventeen year old.  The nurses I remember, were basically "ohgreatwhatdowedoshewantshermombutwerenotsupposedtobringfamilybackbutshescryingandshesonlyseventeen".  Needless to say, they sent a nurse to get my mom.

Also, pre-hip, in post op I didn't have an oxygen mask to wear.  Of which, I might add, I don't like to wear AT ALL, because I can't talk with it on...Post hip, the nurses kept getting onto me because I kept taking the mask off of my face, and finally after I told them that I wasn't wearing the damn mask they gave me a nasal cannula to put in my nose, of which I also didn't like, but I could at least talk with it on.

Another difference is the fact that when my parents left me, I was just on my own.  At Shriner's, a nurse would always stop in until I would go to sleep to see how I was.  Post hip, the only time I saw my nurses was if I called for them to help me out of bed and walk to the bathroom, to give me medicine or check my vitals.  I have to admit, that was the first time that I really felt like an adult, was the first night when my parents left me to go home and I was there by myself.  Although, considering the medicines I was on, I was mostly asleep.

A long running joke we've had through the last few months post hip, is about the Klondike bar.  When I was in Shriner's my parents basically bribed me with Klondike bars, basically because it was the only thing in the vending machine upstairs and it was one of the only things that got me motivated to do anything.  Like go the extra five feet walking without crutches, or doing an extra set of physical therapy.  I didn't get a Klondike bar once throughout my recovery from hip replacement.

Today was awesome because: I got to sleep in an extra hour this morning, thank goodness for late start Wednesdays at our school!

Current location: the blue comfy couch in the living room
days until ACT: 3
days until NaNoWriMo begins: 12
days until the fall musical: 29
days until I become an adult: 80
days until graduation: 213