One week later

It's been a week and a day since I had my left femur screwed, bolted and plated back together. I've been home for five days. I'm more alert, more mobile, and in a little less pain each day. Still just doing "toe-touch" on the bad leg, no weight bearing yet, using crutches to get around. One thing I've discovered with crutches; you cannot carry anything. Haven't yet come up with a good strategy for this, except to ask my family for help. I can use one hand to carry stuff, pinch the crutch with my armpit on that hand's side, and swing it with my armpit, but that's dangerous - using only one hand to control the crutches - and I think it's not good for your armpit to put so much weight on it.

A shower stool makes taking showers safe and possible. It's important to keep clean, with all the sitting and lying down that follows a broken hip. BTW this has confused people; I broke my femur, which is my upper leg bone. I broke it near the ball that fits into the pelvis' socket. That joint is called the hip joint. So I broke my femur, and I broke my hip. If I had broken my femur down towards my knee, I might have gotten a cast. But because of where I broke it, they had to operate to put it in the right place. I'm lucky, too, in that way. The surgeon talked about possibly having to make two incisions to align the bones, but he found the bones in alignment I guess using the fluoroscope, so only one incision was needed.

One of the odd coincidences for me was that I had Kaiser Permanente health insurance on the day of my accident, through my employer, but that changed on the Tuesday after my accident, as did my employer. Now I have BlueCross / BlueShield of Texas coverage, as my previous employer (from Texas) terminated Kaiser Permanente coverage on 7/1, replacing it with BCBS. This is a continuation of my previous employer's healthcare. On 8/1 I get BlueCross / BlueShield of Illinois coverage from my new employer.

I don't have a new job, but in a way my company has a new job. We were bought by a competitor, the Department of Justice cried foul, sued on anti-trust grounds and won. The competitor had to divest itself of our company's assets, and restore us to a pre-acquisition state of competitiveness. A group from Chicago that was already doing some similar work raised some capital and bought us. I've basically worked at the same company for 2.5 years, but its just changed ownership for the second time, and the new entity still has the same name as it did when I joined. Anyway, that's the employer changing bit.

So I have to select a new GP and an orthopedist who will accept both BCBSTX and BCBSIL coverage. Hope to have that sorted, and see someone soon. I don't yet have a recovery plan. I'll give the new orthopedist contact info for the surgeon in UT who worked on me, and a CD-ROM with x-ray and fluoroscope images from before and after the accident. They'll help me recover and rehabilitate.

I want to walk and ride my bike and be able to leave the house! My family has been very helpful, and my work has been very understanding. I'm looking forward to getting better.