Hospitals

Operation day, Monday 10th Jan after a night of not much sleep in the ward, I was told i was first on the list for the Op. I had broken left Neck of femur, the joint with the hip. luckily it was undisplaced.  medical term for not displaced, English for where it should be, but broken,, no wonder you are so long in hospital..

Risk with broken hip is blood flow -
the second piece of luck was that the fracture was closer to the femur, than the ball in the hip socket, the reason this is important is the arteries from the femoral artery spur off and loop round the neck joint closer to the head, the ball joint in the hip. If you damage these arteries and blood flow, the head, ball bit can die. effectively it could be starved of blood flow. this is called AVN http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avascular_necrosis

For the operation there was a choice, General an or spinal block with sedative,  I went for block, with sedative, I asked for a small shot of GA, either way this bit was ok, I had a prep chat, i was talking then the next thing i'm awake on my right side for the spinal block, then roll forward recovery room. and op done.

later i was told went well small incision,through the layers pulled muscle out of the way and dynamic hip screw 110mm in place with a 2 screw plate. that's the xray picture, this fitting works and should allow full range of movement.

surgeon seemed confident and happy about the outcome. Most of her patients were older, with less interest in the science. Not used to sports science cross examination... ;o)

From this stage i have a few thoughts

Before this, while waiting in a&e all the time in the night to the op, i tried to find any information i could on the hip, on the types of surgery and the risks of breakage and surgery, that was a good idea.  If you read bad experiences, that doesn't mean it will end bad for you. it may not be what you want, but try to think about what you learnt, if it did go wrong for someone for a reason, what can you do for you now you know?

links that people sent me - barrygee.blogspot.com  quite good run through, looks like a tough road,  you can find forum posts with people asking, but with well intentioned people who have not had experience replying. more opinion than experience exists. Remember every case is different.

I talked the surgeon and team and was clear about the outcome i wanted. It may be that I have to accept i won't get what i want, but i said if there are options i would like to be able to ride competitively again, so i said if we are using screws or fixings please can we think about that. The surgeons priority is to get you well, so there may be compromise. They did a great job and  because i was fit, 45 and had good bone strength in the femur i needed less screws in the femur. all positive. guess it will be a month before my follow up and x-rays so fingers crossed.

you should also be thinking of the next stage, looking after yourself in hospital, sleep and quality of food help recovery, think about how you are going to manage that.

next I'll cover recovery in hospital and strategy for long term recovery, plus hospital life with the senile.