I'm going to talk about Joint School anyway...
Joint School is an excellent idea - they get patients in before their hip or knee replacements, and explain the whole procedure and aftermath, and everyone fills in a form about their home circumstances and gets to discuss it with a nurse. I had nothing like this when I went in to get my hip done, and would have greatly appreciated it then. However, for some reason this time it reduced me temporarily to a state of abject panic, to the extent that I had to run into the toilets and firmly talk myself out of running out on the whole thing. I think it was the giant cut-away picture of a knee that did it. It rather looks as if they are resurfacing the joint rather than removing the whole thing and replacing it. I am a bit worried about coping in the flat on my own, but as the very (helpful and sensible) head nurse pointed out, if I managed last time with the hip, I should be OK again. I did have Jade there with me for the first week, but I was actually managing to cook and so on without much help from her after a day or so. Pain aside, I can’t really see that the knee will be more incapacitating than the hip was, and I was able to get across the road to the shops after a week at home then.
I’ll be off tomorrow to stock up on DVDs, books, loo roll and tinned and frozen food. One slightly annoying thing that has changed since two years ago is that they expect you to loose daytime clothes to wear, rather than a nightdress, so you don’t feel like a patient as you sit around. This is all well and good in theory, but means I have to lug far more clothes in, and still only have one of those silly little lockers to put them in. Also, although I have lots of t-shirts that will do, the only loose daytime trousers I have are the tracksuit bottoms (aka the “trousers of sadness” because I only wore them when I was really depressed) that were finally sent to the duster box last month. I’ll have to go to Primark or somewhere for a couple of cheap pairs.
I’ll be off tomorrow to stock up on DVDs, books, loo roll and tinned and frozen food. One slightly annoying thing that has changed since two years ago is that they expect you to loose daytime clothes to wear, rather than a nightdress, so you don’t feel like a patient as you sit around. This is all well and good in theory, but means I have to lug far more clothes in, and still only have one of those silly little lockers to put them in. Also, although I have lots of t-shirts that will do, the only loose daytime trousers I have are the tracksuit bottoms (aka the “trousers of sadness” because I only wore them when I was really depressed) that were finally sent to the duster box last month. I’ll have to go to Primark or somewhere for a couple of cheap pairs.