Yvonne's Pogress...

Day by day Yvonne has been continuing to make a steady recovery. On Monday 10th she went for her first physiotherapy session at Stoke Mandeville hospital. The physiotherapist, Keith, was very impressed with her progress and the extent of her flexibility so he added an extra knee-bend exercise to her daily routine.

On Friday 14th I took her to the Doctor's Rooms to have all the staples  removed from the incision in her thigh, a procedure that she really was not looking forward to. She had bad memories of having staples removed after an operation she had many years ago. When the Practice Nurse came into the room, the first thing Yvonne said to her was, "Do you you know how to take these staples out? Have you done this before?" The nurse assured her that it was  procedure that she had performed many times then Yvonne felt more relaxed and confident. The nurse was really expert at the removal and kept pausing after a more painful removal for Yvonne to take a breather and relax for a moment. The whole process took about 15 minutes and at the end of it Yvonne was so relieved and thankful that it hadn't been as bad as she had expected it to be.

Yvonne must now continue with her daily exercises to strengthen the muscles in her thighs and legs and to enhance the healing process. Day by day she is doing more and more but she gets frustrated that there are still many things she is ununable to do. As she gets her strength back and relies less on her walking frame she will be more mobile and she will be able to use her hands again.

The next milestone will be the visit to the physiotherapist at the end of the month.

Yvonne's Hip Replcement

On Monday 3rd October Yvonne went into High Wycombe Hospital to undergo a hip replacement operation on her left hip. She was admitted into the surgical unit at 11:30am and after some routine tests and preliminary checks she went into the operating theatre for her operation at 1:00pm. By 4:45pm it was all over and she was in Ward 12b starting out on her road to recovery. She went into theatre for a hip replacement and came out of theatre complaining that her eye was sore and felt like there was something lodged under the eyelid. She spent the first hour on the ward pestering the nursing staff to get her a cup of tea. She was permitted a cup of tea after she had been out of Recovery for an hour then she felt much better except for the irritation in her eye.

On the Tuesday she was allowed to get out of bed and sit in a chair for a few hours. The physiotherapist had her doing leg exercises and teaching her to get in and out of bed on her own. The Consultant who performed the operation was very pleased with the way the procedure progressed and said it was a very uneventful and routine operation. Over the next couple of days in hospital Yvonne continued to make great progress and she was discharged late Thursday afternoon.

Yvonne's first walkabout

Since she has been back home she has continued to make good progress and has been walking around our bungalow with the aid of a walking frame. She now wants to go for a little walk outdoors to get some fresh air. She is not experiencing much pain at all which is the one thing that she was most concerned about before she went into hospital. If she continues to make such good progress she will be back to her normal self and walking completely normally before Christmas.
Saturday 8th Oct 2011 - Yvonne's 2nd day at home and she is going walkabout already!!! I can see that I am not going to be able to keep Yvonne in one place for very long. It won't be many more weeks before she is out shopping again :-)