Surgical success

I had full replacement hip surgery last Thursday.

Finally.

I had the long overdue procedure on my left hip at Mercy Orthopedic Hospital in Ozark, a facility that basically specializes in fixing hips and knees.

I had heard many good things about the place, and I must say it was all accurate because every aspect of the experience was as about as good as possible from beginning to end. 

To begin with, the building was extremely clean and uncrowded, and private rooms are provided to every patient post-op. Added to that was the fact that every member of the staff my wife Wendy and I dealt with was kind and compassionate, and spoke in easy to understand terminology. The whole time I felt like we were treated more like friends than straight-up clients and the result was that we always felt welcome. 

And the system at Mercy Orthopedic is highly efficient, with specialists in each phase prepared (and eager) to do their part to get you in, get you fixed and get you out – which is exactly what every patient wants.

My procedure was done by Dr. Bradley Walz (pronounced “walls”), who has been doing noninvasive total hip arthroplasty since 2006, which allows for no muscles being cut and a much faster recovery period than older methods. Dr. Walz has a fantastic team around him, and thanks to the top-notch communication skills and clearly purposeful actions of everyone involved, I knew what to expect every step of the way and never felt anything but confidence in the situation.

During my first visit to the facility a few weeks ago for my new patient consultation, I was told I would find the food to be unusually good for a hospital. That turned out to be entirely true; the menu was totally unlike the average hospital fare, and resembled something you would expect to see at a nice, fairly upscale restaurant.

For example, for dinner before my one night stay, I had a wonderful chicken Marsala on angel hair pasta, along with a darn good salad and some more than adequate ice tea. For dessert, I enjoyed an absolutely decadent piece of turtle cheesecake. Breakfast consisted of nicely prepared scrambled eggs, seasoned potato chunks, a biscuit and a tub of succulent sausage gravy, along with coffee and orange juice. 

As I consumed all this wonderful stuff, I didn’t feel like I was in a hospital room. Kudos to Cheryl and the kitchen staff.

Although nothing that took place while I was in the building wasn’t at least somewhat memorable, I’d say my stay was highlighted by becoming acquainted with a couple of registered nurses during my time in my private room following surgery: Casi (pronounced “cassy”), the head day nurse, and Corine (pronounced “coreen”), the lead night shift nurse. In my view, both were obviously well qualified for their jobs and it was apparent that they weren’t just going through the motions and actually cared about making sure I was at ease and comfortable.

While Casi was a bubbly, smiley and generally pleasant presence who was just plain fun to be around, I really got a kick out of Corine’s sarcastic sense of humor and the way she made light of, well, just about everything. That began when she first entered the room, not long before it was time for me to go to sleep.

“How often will you come in during the night?” I asked shortly after meeting her.

Her reply was classic.

“How often will I need to use the shock collar?”

I was caught off guard and later wished I had blurted out a witty comeback, but all I said was, “uhhhh, I don’t know.”

We got along great from there and I enjoyed being her overnight straight man as she kept offering up hilarious snide comments about pretty much any subject of the moment. She said she grew up in a household where “the b.s. was always flowing.”

“My mom once said that if it ever stopped, that’s when you needed to worry,” she said.

Not surprisingly, I missed the actual procedure because I was totally unconscious. I recall being wheeled into the operating room and having Roman, the anesthesiologist, give me the spinal shot (in a specific bent-over position we had practiced earlier) that numbed the lower portion of my body, and then administer a serum in the IV. But the next thing I remember is a nurse leaning over me saying, “your surgery is over and we’re going to take you to the recovery area for about an hour.”

For the record, I began the same process last July at Phelps Health in Rolla, but that didn’t work out. I won’t go into detail about why, but let me just say that I came away with the opinion that it was a weird and unfortunate experience. 

I kind of wish I had been at Mercy Orthopedic last year, but it is suffice to say that everything went down in God’s perfect timing and I’m now on the road to recovery. Honestly, I would recommend Mercy Orthopedic to anyone needing a hip or knee procedure. I don’t think there’s a better option in this region.

Anyway, so now I have some high-tech artificial parts in me, including polyethylene acetabular liners and femoral heads made of cobalt-chrome, Oxinium and ceramic materials, and I truly feel better than I did before.

And having successfully made it through the main segment of the overall circumstance, I’m really looking forward to taking nice long walks with Wendy and our dog Scotty (the Scottie), and it will be fun using the camera on the sideline at high school football, basketball and baseball games without being distracted or hindered by pain. 

And there’s a whole lot more other forms of living to get back to, like traveling and dusting off my golf clubs and setting up some tee times.

Hip, hip hooray! Sorry, I couldn’t resist.