Part 2 Recovery from Hip Surgery-Helpful Tools

 If we were going to recommend any pre surgery tips, we'd say to do any exercises they suggest before surgery! You need to develop your arms for one thing. You're going to need strong arms to push yourself up out of your chair and to use a walker!  Eldy had trouble pushing himself up out of his chair using mostly his arms when he first started getting mobile again and he had sore arm muscles when he started using his walker.

If anybody wants to know what kinds of special equipment were needed for hip replacement, here is what worked for us: 

1. A walker with NO wheels. That way it can't slide away from you. For the first few days, you want something that you can pick up and plant firmly on the ground. When first recovering you want to pick it up and put it down, you really don't need wheels. You need total control of where that walker is going. It worked well even with the carpet on the living room floor and going across the lawn to the car. We got this one on Amazon, it is sturdy, and of good quality. It has adjustable legs as you want your arms to be slightly bent at the elbow when using it so it adjusts for different height users.

2. A toilet seat riser..our apartment toilet is a low 17" to the ground so we had to get the seat up higher to avoid bending at the hip to get down and up. (You have to avoid bending at the hip more than 90 degrees or you might pop the new ball joint out!) There are various models with and without legs. We got the Bemis 4.5" riser, again on Amazon for 76.99. It was also a very easy install and will fit round or elongated toilets. It requires more cleaning more frequently because it sits higher up and is not quite the same shape as the bowel, even though the hardware is designed for either type of bowl-elongated or round.  In hindsight, (see what Sparky did there? haha...) maybe one that was not quite as high would have sufficed. It's REALLY high up so that Sparky's feet can't quite touch the floor! (We only have one bathroom.) (Ok, Sparky, I think you've covered it, says a slightly embarrassed Eldo).

3. A cane....Lots of choices out there...take your pick.

4.  A sock assister--this helps Eldy pull on his socks and it works like a charm. First, Sparky thought this was a pretty silly invention, but after seeing the ease with which Eldy can get his own socks on, it's been a lifesaver and a great invention.

5. A long handled grabber--for odds and ends and dropped pills on the floor, haha--this is a great one and of good quality, not flimsy at all, and can pick up the tiniest of things-like pills. Wish we had had that one in the RV for when things fell behind the TV slot in the living room! Which they did, several times. One time Sparky used a yardstick taped with a bunch of doubled up duct tape to make a sticky trap and managed to recover the fallen items, but this would have been much easier!

6. A shower seat--our apartment tub is deep and has too much depth to get a leg over if you are hip impaired. We had little trouble with this particular seat as the old apartment tub has sloped sides and no matter how we adjusted the legs to the max on all the adjustments possible, the chair still sat at a very slight angle in the tub. You sit down sideways on the chair, then swing your legs over into the tub. Even though it was slightly off kilter, it still worked. Sparky had to take the nice shower curtain off and then cut a section of the plastic liner out for the shower seat to fit so the curtain could still keep the water inside. Eldy was not to shower for four days and to keep the bandage patch away from a direct water hit. One of the most useful tips Sparky found was how to cut a cheap shower curtain plastic liner to fit around the shower chair transfer bench. (That was AFTER she cut out a complete box for the chair to fit through and we had a flood on the bathroom floor! laughs Eldo). Don't do what Sparky did. Here is a link to how it's done: how to cut a shower curtain

7. A hand held shower head. We replaced the apartment shower head with a nice new one so Eldy can more easily shower with the hand held part. It fastens with a strong magnet to the main head. The apartment doesn't care if we change out the shower head, but we have to replace it back to the old clogged up one when we move. (!) The new one simply screwed onto the existing screw threads so that was an easy peasy install! This one is a Kohler from Lowe's and was 99.00. They had lots of choices!

toileting tool

8. A butt wiper, and that's all we will say about that...Angles are everything in hip replacement surgery. You might need one, you might 

not. Inventors sure think of just about everything these days! Sparky shouldn't have ended with that, butt--oh, well.... (Eldy is groaning in the background). In case you are wondering....(NO, they aren't! fusses E.) you stuff a little tissue in the slotted head, then wrap it around a time or two. 

Update: Eldy didn't like this one, so he bought a different one that look just like tongs with long handles.

We hope that this is helpful for anyone who has this type of surgery on their minds. Eldy did his usual research, watching TONS of videos on Youtube on how the procedure was actually done, and watching videos of people documenting their recoveries, so he was a well prepared patient. Now that he is on the mend....(After two weeks he is using a cane and is off all pain meds and doing well in physical therapy).

                                    Until next time.....