The Good or The Bad?

I've read and heard from several of my Hip Sisters who have had surgery on both of their hips that there is a good and a bad experience - one is definitely easier than the other. I've thought a lot about this and honestly can't say which is which - I think that they're just different. I guess if I had to pick, I would say that my right (first) hip was my Bad One. Here are the positives and negatives as I see it:

RIGHT HIP:

• I had no idea what to expect. (-)
• The pain wasn't as bad as I had imagined. (+)
• The Vicodins made me nauseous and gave me nightmares, the anti-nausea patches gave me blurry vision. (-)
• I was tired all the time, for months. (-)
• I was out of the house the day after I came home. (+)
• I pushed myself back to work too soon because I felt like I had to. (-)

LEFT HIP:

• I knew exactly what to expect. (+)
• The pain really hasn't been bad. (+)
• I have the time that I need to properly recover and don't have to push myself back to work for fear of losing my job. (+)
• With a couple of pre-determined exceptions, I can't leave the house for a month. (-)
• I'm not yet strong enough for crutches. A week and a half post surgery and I'm still using the walker about 90% of the time. (-)
• I'm not on Vicodin and the Dilaudid didn't give me any bad side effects. (+)
• Swelling on both legs just sucks. (-)

OK, so now that I've actually broken down for myself, I guess the first one was the bad one. I guess I can add one more thing to the LEFT HIP column:

• I've already done the Bad One. (+)