天美麻豆

Good luck, I hope all goes well, I will look forward to your report .

@JimJ

Good luck Jim. Hope you mend quickly!

I shall need a new hip replacement in around four years time, to replace the exist one.

@JimJ

Wishing you all the very best for your operation and a speedy recovery. Are you getting a titanium knee? I've heard they can produce remarkable results. I'm sure you'll be back on your feet before long, tackling the stairs with ease and getting back to your normal routine sooner than you think. Best of luck, and take care.

First hurdle cleared: I've found a blood donor for the single unit I'll need during the op. It's a crazy system here...

@JimJ

Good luck with the op. I may be heading on the same road in a few years time. Which hospital are you going to?

@grshaw30

It was a toss-up between SofiaMed and Vita 2. My main criterion was which surgeon was going to do it rather than where; I did a lot of research before choosing. It was originally going to be SofiaMed and I'd have no reluctance in using the surgeon there, who has an excellent reputation. However, after more research I went to Vita for a second opinion; the surgeon there was somewhat older (in his 50s) abd again with an excellent reputation.

Of course, one always has to bear in mind that while "the best in the country" is always an accolade, the country in question is only half the size of London... 馃槑

Anyway, I'm always a little chary of younger doctors who can be a bit full of themselves - and also of over-the-hill ones with bleary eyes and shaky hands, of course. The chap at Vita was very business-like and offered to juggle his list to fit me in before a long absence operating in Germany. TBH, I still don't know how the cost will compare to the quote from Sofia Med but I guess it's only money and hopefully it'll be in the same ball park (so much for all the careful research!) How it goes will determine who does the other one, assuming that the Young Gun doesn't take umbrage..but I already have a cover story if needed! In the final analysis, I'd be okay with either of them doing the procedure. But I'm certainly hoping it's not going to be the start of the same kind of saga that my poor wife is still going through.

@JimJ

77 steps!?. Do you live in a 6 story mansion?

@Zooldrool

Nope - but we do live in a house in a "Villa Zone" on the side of a mountain. Our garden is terraced and slopes up to the house from street level at roughly 45掳 and our garages are essentially built into the side of the mountain, ie under the garden and about 20 metres below the house.

@JimJ

Sounds like you've done all the background checks. The sort of things we were doing when my better half's father was going into hospital.聽 On the whole we've found that f you shop around you can receive excellent medical care here. Having said that we have seen the other side of the coin with our first GP who wouldn't even get out of his chair to assess an injury and a specialist that ignored test results, "because he knew better".

I hope all goes well and you make a fast and full recovery.

@grshaw30

I've been here a pretty long time now, over 20 years, and of course my wife's lived in BG all her life (so far 馃槑) We've both found the health system here to be something of a curate's egg, and on several occasions we've been frankly horrified - and that goes for both the public and private sectors!

Judging by my wife's current travails, I'd be loath to trust most doctors here with any really serious ailments unless I really had no other option..聽 Fortunately, knee replacements are fairly routine nowadays, so I'm hoping that "BG's Finest" won't leave me in a wheelchair.聽 I will be wearing one of those t-shirts featuring a menacing black cat brandishing a large kitchen knife dripping with blood with the slogan "You saw NOTHING.." All the surgeons I've ever met shared a pretty morbid sense of humour, so I'm hoping it will go down okay! 馃槄

@JimJ

Good luck with the TKR!

It will be interesting to see how you get on... and we'd love to know why TKR rather than PKR, and how much it costs you. I got a quote for a THR (hip vs knee) from Tokuda in Sofia and (with my NHIF coverage) it was less than a grand (absolute peanuts).

However, I chickened out and was unable to convince myself to even spend a grand in Bulgaria. Instead, I went to Belgium and paid for a fully private op there (no NHIF/NHS support at all, just Bank of Me). However, in fairness, it was a HRA (Hip Resurfacing Arthroplasty) which nobody does in Bulgaria.

I don't know much about knees, but I'd guess you'll be hobbling around just as much a hip person. My tip: get a fancy pair of lightweight arm (forearm) crutches vs. the cheap and cheerful wooden (painful) armpit ones that NHIF/NHS routinely hand out. I got mine at Adapt (dot bg) and they're made by INDESmed. As you delight in your curmudgeonly reputation, I'm sure you'll be very sniffy about them... especially when the cheapies are 1/10 the price. But they're amazing, and you can sprint up loads of stairs and hike to the supermarket with no issue at all! I honestly loved mine, and I'm sure they were a huge factor in how quickly I recovered because I was super active from pretty much the first day.

Well, I've survived this afternoon's operation - so far. It was a little disconcerting to lie on an operating table, completely conscious, listening to electric saws essentially amputating the lower half of your leg and then hefty hammers banging lumps of metal into the bone stumps. And I must mention the buzzing and vibration of the saws and the heavy impact of the hammers - all of which you can feel but without the slightest pain.

However, the stories you hear about being pain-free for the first two days after the op while the anaesthetic wears off aren't true. Knees appear to be fully rechargeable pain-batteries that start discharging their full voltage about 3 hours after the op....I hope that the "it gets worse after a couple days" is just another old wives' tale!

I'll apparently be here a few more days and then it's off to what is supposedly the best Rehab Hospital in the country, to be bossed about by kids in tracksuit bottoms and fancy white tunics.

Glad you survived it and hope you're getting adequate analgesia today!

That's exactly how my brother, who started with knee pain and injuries as a kid, described his knee replacements -- having both legs sawed off then sewn back on again. It took him a while to get fully mobile again, but he now says his knees are the best they've ever been.

Well, I'm still alive - but the kicking part is definitely wishful thinking!

I'm sort of moving about; they've given me rather rickety walker and I'm still on my tod in a "private" room: their bumf tells you the extra cost for this privilege but the reality.is that the private rooms have two beds (the others, four) but they're only private until they need to find a place for another patient. So far I've been lucky!

Today I, with great effort, hauled myself out of bed.at the second attempt and walkered my way to the khazi for the first p**p of my visit. It was pretty exhausting -.and totally pointless. In one of the premier orthopaedic hospitals in the country there are no grab-rails in the bathroom and the toilet is very low..Mission decidedly UNaccomplished!

Anyone who's done any even cursory reading about TKRs will know that a raised toilet seat is de rigueur, and no grab-rails in any hospital loo is a no-no.

So I'm waiting for the physio to show and we'll have an exciting conversation.about toilets ...馃榿

Ouch! That's seriously inadequate! I hope the conversation with the physio got a better result.

In the UK, of course, the physio would tell you that you needed an occupational therapist for that!

@janemulberry

I'm now the proud user of a raised loo seat with built-in grab rails. Today is Day 3 post-op and I'm still not getting a flicker out of my left thigh, which means I can't straighten my leg to get into position to use the walker without a lot of pain. Once I'm in I can do a "bent knee, extended foot shuffle". Haven't been to the loo since Monday, so speed will be of the essence when the time comes...not a pleasant thought right now! 馃榿

I'm glad you got what you needed to make doing the business possible. That was what I as thinking should have already been in place for someone having a TKR. Hopefully what need to be done will be possible without too much pain!

My urine is very dark but the docs and nurses never look at the bag, and the cleaners just drain it into a bowl and throw it down the dunny. I'm going to die of dehydration just to spite them all! 馃槑

My urine is very dark but the docs and nurses never look at the bag, and the cleaners just drain it into a bowl and throw it down the dunny. I'm going to die of dehydration just to spite them all! 馃槑 - @JimJ

@JimJ

Then they'll be sorry!

If you don't still have an IV in, can you ask for more water? I'm sure we'd all rather you don't die from dehydration, or get a nasty kidney infection because of it.

It's unfortunate the the basic nursing care is so crap there. Of course, it's often no better in NHS hospitals, and I've seen some hair-raising mistakes in very expensive London private hospitals. But these are things that patients shouldn't need to ask for, someone should be proactively anticipating your needs.

@SimCityAT

Mine's midway between the last two: I told my wife that my.life depended on slurping down a few cold beers but she looked as unconvinced as the nurses...

Nice try!

I may have solved the Cardie Case - she came in this morning without it; both arms are covered in tats. She put in a new canula yesterday evening, which promptly fell out during the night - it took three tries to get another one in..

I was also informed that my "private room" is likely to metamorphose into a shared one today 馃槖

馃檨

I'm not sure how devout Muslims, Jews or veggies would fare here: some form of pork is served for pretty much every meal - apart from chicken a coupleof times.

Good news! I've been unable to produce even a flicker of life from my thigh muscles, let alone raise my straight leg even a millimetre, and the physios don't work at the weekend ( and aren't much cop here anyway). I've had to improvise a sling to support my leg out of some scrounged bandage, since they don't have even the usual rubber ones here (and don't even bother asking if they have an ice machine).

I've been improvising some exercises, aided by my AI Buddy (when "he" is not hallucinating and making stuff up) but they didn't seem to help. Last night I struggled to the loo on yet another abortive mission and then walkered myself to the bed and hoisted Mr DeadLeg in. I woke at 4am and, as usual, tried to see if I could taise my leg a fraction. If such a thing is possible, I found myself doing the Can-can In Bed! 馃榿

Now I need to work on my pooping..

Okay - The Eagle Has Pooped! Only a couple of walnuts but I'll take what I can get..

After that I did a few rounds of the ward with my walker but the novelty soon wore off, so I managed to do a couple more with my jolly old bastoun..

Now huffing and puffing back in bed.

Well done!

Well, I'm happy to say that I went up the whole 77 steps without a break on my return home today (actually not 100% true - I did stop once inside to cuddle the cats, before continuing up to the bedroom).

I have new painkillers to try, which I hope are going to work some magic...my "good" leg is all but useless now.

So do we call you the $6M man now? Congrats and I'll drink to a quick recovery tonight.

I'm glad you're home! I was wondering earlier whether you'd managed the jailbreak, and if so, how you managed the 77 steps. Well done! Prayers for your continued complete and far lower pain recovery!

So do we call you the $6M man now? Congrats and I'll drink to a quick recovery tonight. - @grshaw30

The Memsaab isn't permitting me any alcoholic libation for the moment (darned ABs!), so sparkling water is the best I can manage...but I thank you for the kind thought.