Day Five- Tale of Two Facilities

The morning started with the promise of leaving the hospital where I had the hip replaced..Temperature check, site wound healing check, blood pressure  check, surgeon gave some encouraging words double check. I was ready to go. Because of the previously mentioned mostly minor complications I stayed an extra day.. Not happy but the thought it will cost the insurance company another $3,000-4000 made my hip pain a bit less..

 Before leaving there was one more chore. A date with the physical terrorist. Much to my delight there is a different terrorist on the weekend. Someone who evidently has a clue as how to rehab someone who just had hip surgery or any surgery I would guess. I tried walking on crutches which the first terrorist wouldn't allow, and walked, fairly quickly and steadily about 50 feet before feeling dizzy on the crutches. Again I clogged the main artery of the hospital's 2nd floor with  the chair the therapist  (I really don't think this woman is a terrorist) quickly threw under me before I hit the floor.. After about 5 minutes I returned to the cutches and ambled back to the room on to a chair where she put me through some leg and  body exercises. I didn't know a therapist could do that.

One of my conclusions is it is important to have a therapist that cares for.the patient, not someone who is glad I walked only a few feet so she could move on to not helping the next patient.more quickly, I feel some of the medical issues were caused by not successfully getting around and not having the legs manulipulated, blood and fluids moving around. There is a lot of  not so nice stuff that happens during surgery. By walking and exercising the legs ,fever is reduced, the swelling goes down along with the temperature the wound drains easier. The surgeons, nurses, aides and every one else were  nice and work very hard for their patients. The first therapist was a true terrorist. It must have been her friendly and perky behavior that failed my personal security sensing devices. The second a true therapist and helper.

So it is off to the next facilithy which is a nursing home partially used to permantly park older people after driving around and around  many neighborhoods  looking for a spot. And for people like myself who need therapy after surgery, a stroke or what not. I parked in  the short term parking area.

My first impression is I will get good care. The nurses, aides and especially the therapists gave the feeling of wanting me to have a successful and short stay. It is too early to know for sure but I am avery optimistic.

Tomorrow hopefully real rehab will start. As for computing there is no wifi. What is why fly?? However an older desktop computer was found on the third  floor and when dusted off  works enough.    I   am  thinking faster than the words appear on the screen and is making me a little nervous. The mouse is barely working and I suspect it must have been used for medical research at one time. The password is "res" which is short for resident. If the password were resident I would have been very nervous.

* Not that I have to mention it but the computer has no spell check