Six weeks after surgery

I've been in a bad mood this week. More on that later. I'll start with the good news.

I'm up to one hour on the bike. I'm actually feeling close to normal, but of course that's inside on the trainer and I haven't been pushing too hard. I can ride comfortably in all positions (on the hoods, in the drops, standing). My hip feels a little bit different (difficult to explain and maybe 90% mental, but I can "feel" my new parts in there), but I can actually envision riding without noticing it. I'm optimistic that I'll get there one day.

Walking, however, is a different story. Here's my x-ray again for reference:

I had an IM nailing done for a broken hip. (I'm no expert, so I've been having a hard time knowing when to call it "hip" versus when to call it "femur". The actual break was on the femur close to the hip joint, but I think they refer to the whole thing as a broken hip to differentiate between breaking the femur midway between the hip and the knee.) There's a rod in the middle, two screws on top, and one screw on the bottom. The actual break is near the top close to where the two screws are.

One would expect it to hurt near the top where the actual break was. In my early days of recovering, that was exactly what happened. I had a difficult time moving my leg from front to back and side to side. I was using crutches to walk and was allowed to bear weight, but the weight wasn't much at first and I could feel the pain near the actual hip joint.

As time went on, I put more and more weight on my leg and the pain got lower and lower. I regained the ability to move my leg from front to back and from side to side. My range of motion improved and there was only one stretch that seemed to lag behind the others (touching my knee to my chest). Here I am 6 weeks after the surgery and the actual hip part of things doesn't really seem to bother me very often.

What about that bottom screw? It bothered me a little from the start, but the pain in that area has never been severe. It's more of an annoyance. When I still had my staples in I wasn't sure if I was feeling the pain from the screw inside or from the staples outside. However, the pain in that area does not seem to improve. My hip has gotten better and better over time, but the area where that bottom screw is hasn't seemed to improve at all.

That's really starting to worry me at this point. The problem for the moment is that I can't walk without a limp. I don't know what the deal is. For whatever reason, I'm still not able to balance myself on my bad leg. I can understand that my muscles are weak on my bad side from the trauma of surgery, atrophy, etc. However, I've been trying to exercise those muscles and I just don't seem to be making any progress. When I have pain, the pain is in that area where the bottom screw was inserted.

So now I'm left wondering whether this is a normal part of my body readjusting itself or something has gone wrong. If something is wrong, was it the surgery, the exercises I've been doing, or what? If I caused it, was I working things too hard or not hard enough? It's just frustrating because I feel like I'm not making progress any more. I've had the same limp for 2 weeks straight. When I try to do single-leg squatting-type exercises it hurts in that bottom screw area, and the pain feels more like a bone thing than a muscle thing. Why would that part of the bone not be healed but the actual broken part is?

My doctor appointment is still two weeks away and I'm not sure if I can wait that long. I know I should try to be patient, but something just doesn't seem right. I hope it's all in my head.

Four weeks after surgery

The big news this week is that I have started riding my bike on the trainer. I did my first ride on February 26th, which was 3 weeks and 1 day after surgery. It wasn't anything impressive: just 5 minutes of spinning. The hardest part was actually getting myself up on the bike. It took a combination of a chair on one side and the kitchen counter on the other. My wife kept a close eye on me to make sure I didn't go too long or too hard.

Today, 9 days later, I'm up to 25 minutes at a time and I can get on the bike without the help of the chair. It's all just easy spinning, but I can tell that I'm making progress. When I first started riding I couldn't ride in the drops at all. My flexibility wasn't there and it just hurt too much. Now I can ride in the drops a little bit. I only do it for one minute at a time, but I can do it. Standing and pedaling is another thing I couldn't do at first. Now I can do it for one minute at a time. I could probably do more, but standing on the trainer isn't the most natural thing to do, even when 100% healthy.

I've made pretty good progress with my ROM exercises. I can do all of them without pain. I'm still lacking flexibility, though. I hope flexibility doesn't end up being a long-term problem for me. I started doing leg extensions at 10 pounds. Maybe it's in my head, but I feel like my left leg is visibly smaller than my right leg. It will probably take a long time to get them on even ground. I can't really do much yet. I can't even squat my own body weight.

My major setback for the week involves the elliptical trainer. On Friday (2/28) I got on and noticed a weird sensation in my hip. I wouldn't call it "clicking," but something was rubbing something the wrong way. If I put my hand over my hip I could easily feel it. I got off and didn't do the elliptical for the next 2 days. However, around the same time I was beginning to ride my bike on the trainer, so I basically abandoned the elliptical. I'm not having the problem on the bike. Yesterday and this morning I did a little time on the elliptical and I think the problem has gone away. I'm still a little bit scared, though. I haven't done a real elliptical session for the whole week. I might give it a try tomorrow.

The other thing that's been occupying my mind is my limp. I've made it to where I can walk without crutches, but not without a very noticeable limp. It's weird because I feel like I'm making good progress everywhere else except in this area. No matter how slowly I try to walk, I still can't walk without a limp. I'm not sure what the problem is, but I do know that I can't stand up and balance myself on my left leg. I've been standing next to the wall and slowly building up my ability to stand on my left leg. I can't even stand 30 seconds without touching the wall at this point. Even when I'm balancing on my own power for a few seconds, the leg is very shaky. I'm hoping the balancing act will pay off.