Finally!

My mother finally had the second half of her hip replacement surgery today. The first half was August 25--we've been waiting almost 4 months. Meanwhile, she's been in a rehab facility here--400 miles from home--where I am pretty much the only person available to check in on her. (Her husband can't stay here with her because he is receiving chemotherapy treatments in Hometown.) So it was a huge relief to finally have this surgery.

Of course, it did not go as smoothly as planned.  After the surgeon opened her up, he came out to tell us that he would have to replace her femur because there wasn't enough bone left to attach the hip.  And in the end, she ended up getting a new knee, too, because the new femur couldn't attach to the artificial knee that was already there.

So she now has an incision from her hip to mid-calf and will be on bedrest for 7 days to allow it to hear. She'll be in the hospital for at least 10 days, instead of the originally planned 3-4.  And then rehab starts all over again. We were hoping she could go home by mid-January, but who knows how long recovery will take now.

And she will eventually have to come back to have the other hip done.

This was a big step, but it still feels like a never-ending nightmare.