Out of Pain and In a Boat

Thanks to you all for your good wishes. I haven?t really got a clear explanation as to what happened last week - except that it may have been caused by the physical examination I had in the morning. My GP thinks the soft tissue around the implant became inflamed, which would explain both the pain and my inability to lift my leg! I can't believe I could end up in so much pain from that but it's the best explanation I've got at the moment.

I?ve been pretty well pain free since then and am totally motivated to getting back into doing my hip exercises regularly.

From conversations with other hip replacement patients I am beginning to get the feeling that quite a few of us aren?t getting the input we?d want from our physiotherapists. One of the questions that comes up is "How long should I do the exercises for?"

I did my exercises twice a day until the time I started to become physically active again. Once I started walking and swimming regularly I dropped the physio ? working on the assumption that I was getting enough exercise now. I think that was simply wrong.

The exercises your physio gives you are very specific and aren?t replicated by just doing regular exercise ? well not all of them anyway. My thinking now is that we need to go on doing the exercises for a whole lot longer.

What do you think? Any physios out there who can comment?

Other News: Yesterday I went kayaking ? for the 2nd time ever. The first time was in France about twenty years ago. A small group of us hired kayaks and paddled about the marsh lands ? great fun until we realised that the sound of the guns was probably hunters shooting duck on the very same marsh lands and that these hunters probably couldn?t see us. We paddled for land - fast.

The pond at North Cave (in East Yorkshire) was much quieter and I had some excellent instruction. Kayaking is supposed to be suitable for people of all ages and levels of mobility and it seemed to work well for me until I tried to get out of the boat ? ho hum! Luckily there were sufficient strong, young men around to haul me out ?

Which got me thinking about adding a new page to the site about what people do with their new hips. More later.
Love to you
Pamela