Regular follows of this blog will know all about my European adventures. For those of you who are first-time visitors to this blog, welcome! Just to bring you up to speed the last three months have been extremely tough – I cycled up a few mountains, tromped around numerous well-worn tourist tracks over the UK, plus went off the beaten track all in the name of food and a good coffee. Yep, I was living the good life. However, during this time I had a return of my hip pain for which I had surgery last year. Definitely ‘not happy Jan’!

After coming back home I saw my surgeon, the fabulous Dr David Young (DY for short), down at Melbourne Orthopedic Group. While David is an insanely busy man, he will always make time for his patients, ensures he gets all the details, and covers all the bases. Something that I dare say is probably becoming quite rare in our high-speed society and 24/7 desire for anything and everything. After having nothing turn up on an MRI, we decided to go in for a hip arthroscropy to see what has been causing my pain and try to fix the problem once and for all.

Yesterday, Friday 24th August 2012, I went back into the Avenue hospital to have my second hip surgery. Unlike my first surgery where I went in to get DY’s opinion in the morning and was on the operating table that very night, I had had a whole 9 days to ruminate about my upcoming ordeal. Usually I deal with stressful events by using the power of distraction i.e. not thinking about the event I am stressed about until it arrives. Hence, by the time the stressful event arrives you have to live in the moment and don’t have time to get nervous or stressed. Genius really. As such, I made sure I chatted to all the nurses after I was admitted and I finally got to have a decent chat to my friend G who has also just gotten back from OS (he did have a bit of a chuckle that the only time I could find to talk to him that wasn’t at the end of the day was while I was waiting for surgery; I thought it was the perfect time for a catch-up!).

I suppose the reason for this post is to really give a massive shout-out to all the team at the Avenue Hospital down in Windsor. I couldn’t have asked for a better bunch of people. As an aside – it is a very small world. My brilliant Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner, Michael Keshishian at Sakura, his partner was working that night and came in to say hi after my surgery. So not only did I get to meet a whole lot of new people but also had the loving faces of my parents when I woke up, an unexpected smiling face from Leor, and my new Dougal Superman Daffodil Day bear – courtesy of my mum.

 However, I did find my power of distraction technique wasn’t quite strong enough when my anesthetist was going through the facts and figures associated with the general anesthetic, the epidural and all the painkillers I was about the have. Some of the stats were: 1 in 100 experience headaches, 1 in 550 chance of ongoing numbness for three months, 1 in 20 000 chance of permanent nerve damage or 1 in 200 000 chance of death. Queue for the expected hyperventilation. Thankfully Mark’s phone rang and he had to quell his compulsory pre-surgery prep talk to take a call for a few minutes. That gave me a chance to lie down, focus on breathing, stop my head spinning and resume some control of my faculties upon his return.

After that everything went smoothly. I had a lovely orderly, who is currently studying marketing (a very interesting combo!), a nurse who made sure I was rugged up nice and tight, an assistant nurse with the magical warm rug who helped out last year, and another man, whom I believe was helping out Mark, in the surgery room by the name of Tom. Tom was fantastic – not only a cyclist but also knew about all the great rides in Europe. Talking about cycling did the trick; I successfully managed to avoid thinking about the needle for the drip being shoved firstly into my hand, and after this didn’t work (apparently I have petite veins, which I naturally thank my mother for), we had to go down the side of my wrist. Joy. However, I soon had a surgery gin and tonic followed shortly by three glasses of champagne when the epidural went in. Ciao world, Bonjour sleep.

 Part of the procedure is having a smiling face when you wake up. My lovely orderly was back and I had another friendly nurse to chat to while still in a semi-induced daze of general anesthetic. DY came over briefly – my hip is awesome, he just had to remove some adhesion’s from my labrum. Other than that, two weeks of gentle spinning and then I am back on the bike. Awesome news.

This was followed up by extremely caring evening and night nurses. Can’t say I have ever had a catheter before, apologies if I am sharing a little too much, and I found it be an ‘interesting’ experience. On the one hand, it was great because I didn’t need to go to the bathroom and disturb the recent site of surgery. On the other hand, knowing that there is a bag at the end of your bed didn’t exactly make for the best bedfellows. I kept trying to compare it to being drug tested – didn’t quite manage to convince myself though.

I had a yummy brekkie of porridge and tea, with another familiar smiling face behind the breakfast trolley. Shortly afterwards it was back home for a nice warm shower, a change into non-hospital underpants, and a cup of green tea while reading The Age Epicure. Bliss.

Before I get too distracted by food or coffee, I would just like to say a MASSIVE thank-you to everyone at the Avenue Hospital. I truly felt like I was in extremely safe hands and that I was exceptionally well cared for. Sending out my best wishes to all of you.

 

 Until next time,

 

Ride safe, ride happy, ride in the moment

  Han

 

Yep, needles freak me out a little…