Virgil

Well, we went to the orthopeadist the other day and he recommends a hip replacement. She's marginally improved, but pain is still there and while the joint is held together with screws, one can see the fracture line on the x-rays and the ball of the joint not quite aligned in the socket.

I was about to say, ok let's do it, until he went through the obligatory stating of the risks. He said there is a 1 in 100-200 chances of dying, 1 in 100-200 chances of infection, 1 in 100-200 chances of developing a serious blood clot, and 1 in 100-200 chance of not getting the new joint correct. Overall that adds up to a 95% success rate, meaning there is a 5% non-success rate. That may sound like good odds to the average person, but to an engineer it sounds frightening. I deal with getting things to work 99.999% of the time. That's a failure rate of one in 1,000. If your car failed to start 1 in a 100 and you got in your car once a day to drive it, that means it would fail to start three to four times a year. If the odds were it would fail to start 1 in a 1000, then it wouldn't start once every three year. So when the doctor told me those odds, I froze.

So I put it on hold, and told him we have to talk it over. And i spoke to my sister, and I spoke to people and we pretty much decided that we should do it. As far as operations go, that's actually not too bad. She can't live with the pain.

Also I asked him whether the pain med was causding the headaches and lack of sleep. He wouldn't answer. He said I needed to talk to her general doctor about that. I guess he doesn't understand her overall condition. As it turns out her headaches are going away with the sinus medication, so perhaps that was part of the reason. But she still can't sleep at night, and lack of sleep may be contributing to the headaches. The doctor asked how often she was taking the medication, and I said once a night, and he didn't think that was excessive. So perhaps I over reacted there.

So now I have to call him up and schedule whatever for the operation, but I need to first contact her general doctor to get a clearence that there are no other issues that might prevent this operation. So this will definitely happen after the holidays.

Thanks to all who offered support and advice.