Re: Stuff I've been too embarrassed to ask Doctors!! Warning some of it's girly!!

May 5, 2004

Dear Morag,

As you are going private, I am not sure whether or not you are allowed

to use the NHS Occupational Therapist's for all the paraphernalia you'll

need at home, but in theory, you should be able to do so. You could

phone the hospital in Birmingham and ask them what private patients

usually do about this. But they may not be up on ish regulations,

(which may be different from England), so it is probably best to contact

your local Social Services Dept, tell them you are having a private hip

op in Birmingham, and ask if you can have an Occupational Therapist

assessment before the op so that you can get all the needed

equipment-raised toilet seat, toilet rails, grabbers, etc. Crutches,

canes, etc.(anything to do with walking) come from physiotherapists, not

Occupational Therapists. The hospital usually provides them and you

return them when you are done. Or at least that happened in my case.

Again, ring the hospital and check with them about their usual procedure

for private patients. As for a recliner, I think you only need them if

you have had a 2 hips done at once. An ordinary bed with extra pillows

for your legs work just fine if you have only had one hip operated on.

Also,--do you live with anyone? If not, see if you can get someone to

stay with you when you are first at home. It really will help, although

one can manage alone, as you will have heard from this site.

As for your other personal question, am afraid as I am now beyond all

that, I can't answer, but once again, I do suggest phoning and asking

the hospital about it. They will probably have their own procedures for

this in any case.

And as for the scar, again this seems to vary with the surgeon. If you

go into the Daily Mail web site, type in resurfacing on the Femail page,

there is an article written by Best's ex-wife who had a

resurfacing with Mr. Treacy privately. She says he told her the scar

would be 10 " . When she protested, she ended up with a 4 " one. I've a

big long one-10 " , that goes from my side thigh back into my buttock, but

it is neat and rapidly fading, 5 months on.

Eleanor

Stuff I've been too embarrassed to ask Doctors!!

Warning some of it's girly!!

Hello everybody again!

I am so glad to have found this group. Living so far away from my

hospital means I am really not getting all that much info from them

so thankyou so much to everyone who has been replying to me.

I was wondering...folk on this site talk about their recliners (what

is a recliner anyway?) and crutches, canes, grabbers, toilet seats

etc. etc. Where did you guys get them from? Did you buy them or do

you borrow them from the hospital? If you have to buy it what do I

need? I'm having my resurf done on my right hip only

privately in birmingam by Mr Treacy.

Also, perhaps a daft question, where will my scar(s) be and what

will it (they) look like?...Not that I'm bothered, it's just that my

right hip is already covered in scars from surgery performed 23

years ago (I actually quite like them) and I'm wondering what my

hip will look like post resurf... I'm hopefully going on holiday in

July. Would a bikini be out of the question? What about swimming?

Finally (and a bit embarrassingly) calling all female hippies!!...

My operation falls right upon THAT time of the month! I stopped

taking the pill about 3 months ago when I found out it was best not

to be taking it when you need an operation, so I can't run two packs

together. Does anyone know how erm...the technicalities of this will

work when I'm having an operation/recovering...? I know you can get

a progesterone pill from your doc that makes you skip a month.

SHould I do this? If anyone would rather reply to this privately my

email is morag.mcintosh@...

I'm a bit embarrassed to ask my doctors any of this...so if anyone

who knows could reply to me I'd be very grateful!

Cheers everyone

Mo

xx

May 5, 2004