All systems GO!

Monday was a tense day. Adam’s 3 week-follow up appointment was scheduled for Monday the 16th and honestly, we had no idea what to expect.

Along the way in this post-op journey, there have been signals that perhaps this recovery plan was a little unusual. We had multiple people ask us when Adam would start physical therapy —there was none scheduled. My personal trainer (who also works in a physical therapy office) asked me what kind of rehab exercises Adam was given to do — there were none. The ONLY thing that we knew about was the follow-up appointment with the surgeon on the 16th. Based on literally every other conversation I had ever had with someone who has had a hip replacement (when you’re a pastor you know a lot of these folks), it all just seemed odd that there was no rehab prescribed. This led to a pretty tense Sunday evening and Monday morning.

When appointment time rolled around, you better believe I was looking forward to being the taxi (which actually took some choreography and an assist from my dad as Miriam had an appointment to get to around the same time). We headed up to Orthopedic and Sports Institute in Appleton and enjoyed some puzzle therapy in their waiting room before Adam’s name was called. When it was his turn to go back, it was like he was seeing old friends again, as the nurse was the same person who helped him with all the pre-op stuff in that really short span of time a couple weeks ago.

As she’s doing her initial question asking, Adam slipped in there that we’re really hopeful about this appointment because we are scheduled to leave on the 23rd. The nurse looked at him, looked at his chart, then said, “I don’t know. It seems like an awfully big risk with blood clots. I personally wouldn’t do it,” then she walked out of the room.

That didn’t feel great. I was convinced I was about to be making calls to cancel all of our reservations. Waiting for the doctor to come in felt like a decade even though it was maybe 10 minutes tops, and bless Adam Clifford for navigating all of my anxious neuro-spicy energy as I oscillated between doom commenting and making random observations about things on instagram.

So in walks this suave, everything you’d expect an orthopedic surgeon to look like guy, who briefly shakes our hands and immediately goes into a run-down of Adam’s case as if it was straight from a scene in Grey’s Anatomy. Adam tosses out the question about Thailand, and the doctor responds with, “We’ll talk about that in a bit.”

Cue me heavily breathing.

But I have to say… that guy transitioned into talking about Thailand as smoothly as he walked in. Very nonchalantly he started talking about aspirin regimens, and protocols for how often to get up and move while on a plane, and energy reserves, and airport handicap assistance, and honestly it took me a bit to catch on. I was SO convinced that this thing wasn’t going to happen that it took me a bit to sink into the reality that Adam was in the process of getting medical clearance to travel!

Once I finally caught on, there were questions. We had heard so much about the risks of blood clots while on a plane that we asked a few times, “so should we be very worried about this?” Each time the doctor responded with, “Nah. There’s been lots of studies and research that shows that flying isn’t that big of a risk factor anymore. It more has to do with how much you are moving around.”

So there you have it folks! It’s on like donkey-kong! With just 3 more days until we check in for our flights, we are doing whatever we can to mitigate any other risks that could impact our travel. With a winter weather watch in effect, we’ve adapted our Thursday schedule. After experiencing some significant back pain I’ve now visited the chiropractor and a massage therapist to get that all squared away…then the only loose canon is kid germs. We’re currently evaluating how far we want to go in mitigating Miriam’s risk of getting ill before we leave — we’ve heard multiple reports of a stomach ick going around and we are monitoring that situation closely. Maybe mother nature will just take care of that part for us with a snow day on Friday? We shall see!