You can talk to pretty much anyone, and they will tell you that orthopedic surgery isn’t something they’re very keen on doing. It’s scary, it’s painful, and you never really know what you can expect if something goes wrong. So, you should never do it, right? Wrong.
Avoiding orthopedic surgery is never the right answer. As someone who has had their fair share of orthopedic surgeries, both successful and not-so-successful ones, I can tell you that nothing good comes out of waiting.
As you’re probably aware, surgery is always the last-resort option. Every respectable doctor will first advise you to exercise or take some form of therapy, physical or other, and only if that proves to be futile will they recommend surgery. So, it’s not like you have much choice in the first place.
However, you kind of have a choice – you can refuse to get surgery. Even though that is fully within your rights, believe me when I say – that’s the worst thing you can do. Here’s why.
Why Did I Wait?
As a teen, I was diagnosed with CMT, a genetic condition affecting a large number of people. One of the first symptoms I noticed was my feet deforming. I developed hammer toes, my foot “shrank”, my heel shifted inwards, my ankle started protruding, and after a while, I could no longer walk properly. I was touching the ground with the outside of my feet.
Naturally, after a few years, surgery was necessary to fix the issue, but I didn’t want to lose my summer break. So, I waited. A few years passed, and what was supposed to be an easy surgery and a month-long recovery turned into a fairly complex operation and an 8-month long, painful recovery.
But, enough about that. Not everyone’s suffering from a lifelong progressive disease that’s ruining your bones, muscles, and nerves. Some people simply get hurt. However, just because your prognosis isn’t as certain as mine was doesn’t mean your ailment won’t get worse. If you don’t treat it – it most certainly will.
But, if you won’t take my word for it, maybe a word from professionals at adriameduae.com will help you realize why you shouldn’t delay your orthopedic surgery. Here’s what you should know.
1. Physical Therapy Can Only Get You So Far
As you know, most of the time, people are instructed by their physicians to take physical therapy to try and fix whatever’s bothering them. It could be knee pain, ankle pain, back pain – it doesn’t matter. Physical therapy is known to help with some of this. However, physical therapy can only go so far.
If there’s something a bit more serious going on underneath the surface, exercising a few times a week won’t help you all that much. It will probably help, but not to a point where you’d say, “oh, I feel great now”.
Sometimes, surgery is your only option.
2. Time Doesn’t Fix Everything
Time could maybe mend a broken heart, but it definitely won’t fix your orthopedic issue.
Even if the initial diagnosis is not that serious, and you don’t find your problem to be too severe – you really shouldn’t postpone your surgery if that’s the only way to really fix the problem. In fact, delaying the surgery will almost certainly make matters worse and will almost never make things better.
You wouldn’t operate on a twisted ankle. You’d rest with some ice on your ankle, and you’d walk in a matter of days. However, some problems can’t be fixed with ice and time.
3. Recovery Time Will Be Longer
Another thing that can and probably will happen if you postpone your surgery is you’ll prolong your recovery process. Even if you think that you don’t have the time to take a month or two off work to deal with your issues, be certain that the day will come when you’ll be forced to take six months off, whether you can afford it or not, and whether you want it or not.
The recovery period varies from one surgery to another, but one thing that always stays the same is – the bigger the problem, the longer the recovery.
So, if you take your sweet time and delay your surgery over and over again, you can be certain that it will take you longer to get back to full health and resume with your daily life. So, act quickly!
4. Get Rid Of The Pain Quicker
Surgery can be scary – that’s undeniable. However, fear is nothing compared to the physical pain you will experience for a long time if you don’t get your problem fixed. Sure, we’re capable of adjusting, and we learn to live through the pain, but we really shouldn’t – at least not in this case.
Quality of life should be your number one priority. It sure is easy to forget what it was like when you were living pain-free, but that doesn’t mean that you should try and live that life again. Living a pain-free life should trump the fear of surgery or whatever other reason you might have for delaying it.
And, sometimes, the answer to getting rid of pain and getting back to living a pain-free life is surgery. So, do it. Do it as soon as you can.
5. Surgeries Are Far More Successful Nowadays
Back in the day, maybe you could justify delaying surgery or even avoiding one, but that doesn’t really fly nowadays. Medicine and medical technology have come so far that almost every orthopedic surgery is a major success.
What’s even better, a great number of orthopedic surgeries performed nowadays require patients to spend only a day or two in the hospital. Even if your back or knees are being operated on, there is a good chance that you’ll walk out of the building the following day – maybe even the same one.
Everything about orthopedic surgery has progressed a ton – from success rate to recovery times. So, it would be ludicrous to delay it.
Conclusion:
As you can see, there are several reasons why you shouldn’t ever delay your orthopedic surgery. Hopefully, you’ve learned a thing or two today, and you now realize why it wouldn’t be wise to delay surgery, no matter how much you don’t want it.
