Not such a deal these days- and unless you have an unusual situation and if they used a cemented version, they'll have you out of your bed the next day and out of there in no time. But do buy a fat pillow- you may not know why yet, but you soon will. ;-)

I have zero pain tolerance. But I figure that the choice is between spending a few weeks in pain and spending the rest of my life in pain. It's no contest when I think of it like that. The surgeon said that I can expect to spend about 3 days in the hospital - that's it.

In your shoes I'd google longevity of cemented vs uncemented hips, most particularly the "Exeter" variety that still has extraordinary results 3 decades later... not so you can p*ss of your surgeon by being a know-all but so you can satisfy yourself that your surgeon is doing what's going to be best for you, which is a hip that won't need revision in a decade when in 2014 statistically you can expect to live at least another 30 years.

I am pretty sure that he said I was having the uncemented variety.