@jbro sorry for not replying sooner to your questions. I'm still doing well, even after the false alarm.
When my infection first presented (after the first THR), I first became suspicious something was wrong because I began to lose strength and range of motion (things I had regained through PT after the THR). The first infection wasn’t clinically obvious until it actually showed as large abcess coming out through the surgical scar but that was probably another 6 weeks past what I felt were the initial concerns I had relayed to my Ortho and his PA.
Through all of this, I had often asked about more rigorous testing. But, to put it into perspective, my infectious disease doc (who I really trust) helped me understand it from his perspective: blood work is only indicative of "something:" going on, and it could be anything from a cold/flu or a stubbed toe to an infection at the joint. He was very hesitant to order a joint aspiration because there’s a risk of actually introducing an infection when it may not have otherwise been present.
I think the biggest problem with my infection was the fact that they weren’t able to get a positive culture for anything until after the 2-stage process. Vancomycin is a powerful and broad spectrum antibiotic and while it effectively suppressed my infection, it apparently wasn’t quite right to eliminate what I had. I think they only offered the single-stage revisions after that knowing that the infection was “almost” gone, rather than something that had been there for a while and was most likely attached to the hardware.
My infectious disease doc would never give me a good answer when I asked him about how long until I could relax. “The longer, the better” is all I got. But I think once you make it 3-6 months out, you’ve made it past the infection you had. However, with this hardware, the risk of infection from a new source is always a possibility. Heck, dental cleanings introduce a potential risk of infection to our THR’s but there doesn’t seem to be anything conclusive in the literature about whether those should be treated with antibiotics as a preventative measure (from what I’ve seen).
Wishing you the very best,
Art.