home safety after hip surgery

Hi, and good luck with your upcoming surgery. Ouch! As far as the dogs are concerned, being a dog lover and working with them for a living at the moment, taking a break from nursing and doing something "fun" for a change!, I can recommend: a) kennel crates for them-will provide you, their mum, much needed time for rest and a break from being worried about their containment. b) boarding them at a decent kennel for the first week or so, c) having a pet sitter come by once a day to clean up their mess on the deck, feed and water them, walk them, let them out of their crates and play with them. Option c would be the least expensive. Good luck on their care as well as your own and a speedy recovery.

I work on an ortho unit and the patients who are going to be getting any kind of joint surgery have to go to a class a couple weeks prior - they learn all about hip precautions, types of pain control, etc.....

In addition, all of our patients have care management consults to arrange for either home health/pt or rehab. In general (at least at our hospital), unless the patient is fairly young, most hip replacements go to rehab after staying with us, they use walkers and are taught to navigate steps before leaving us. I would tell your surgeon that you are concerned about your home environment and ask for a consult for rehab.

I absolutatly disagree with using your seat to move up and down steps. It flexes your hip more than 90 degrees which is a huge risk for it to dislocate. Again, tell your doctor and tell physical therapy that you have steps to navigate, they will teach you.

I understand you don't want to be away from your husband if in rehab, but you have to put your safety first. If you aren't safe to be at home then you shouldn't be there. And believe me, at rehab you won't have much time to miss him - our patients have activities for about 6 hours a day.