How I Joined the Revolution in New Body Parts
First, it was just a hitch in my step, then my legs began to feel sore and weirdly hollow during my daily walk with my dog, especially if I lollygagged along the way and spent time standing and chatting with friends we met. By the time I’d get home, down a steep hill, my right hip outright throbbed with the aching.
Right, an orthopedic apparatus; Wellcome Library Rare Books
It didn’t take long before I developed a limp on that side. A couple I know saw me favoring that leg and the wife said, “You’re going to need a hip replacement. Better sooner than later.”
My reaction was what were they talking about? Hip replacement. For one thing, I hadn’t heard about this revolution in new body parts the boomers have helped fuel. Besides, I was young, my early 70s, and had had only one operation in my whole life. Some 30 years before. I had miles to go, no room for such a procedure.
Turns out my neighbor who told me I’d need the operation knew what she was talking about. She had undergone a hip replacement herself a few years before. And she was at least ten years my junior. But still, I thought, not me. Slowly, I recovered. My hip got much better, despite the steep hillsides in my neighborhood. Harumph, I thought, so much for what they knew. Hah.
Roll a few months forward. A clumsy fall in the grocery store and I landed hard on that right hip, on the bony protrusion on the side that I learned only later is called the trochanter. This wasn’t the first time I’d fallen and I expected just like before, it would hurt like heck but get better. Six months of therapy and an x-ray later I learned the bitter truth, my neighbor was right. My right hip needed replacement.
Arthritis, likely heightened by the trauma of the fall, had eaten away the entire cartilage between the ball and socket of that hip, now down to bone on painful bone. The doctor showed me on the x-ray. No space between those bones. They were surrounded by a halo of white on the film. Sclerosis, the doctor called it. He explained that is how the bones react to the constant rubbing together. They change, growing lumpy and sclerotic.
The timing of the surgery was up to me. The pain would dictate. It became so intense it caused a permanent hitch to my walk, so bad that sometimes I felt like I had a peg leg and would hobble along trying not to put weight on it. I had to postpone a planned European trip. The only real solution, aside from a steroid shot that likely wouldn’t last for long, was that surgery to replace my hip. The only way to regain my mobility.
I opted for a well-known surgical team of orthopedists in my town and the latest surgery, known as the anterior frontal approach. I rescheduled my trip for several months away.
It seemed like people came out of the woodwork to tell me they too had undergone the procedure. How amazing it could be, how quickly they recovered. A walk in the park.
Pre-operation, I made the mistake of asking the physician’s assistant for a graphic description of the procedure. You lie on an x-shaped table, the subject leg mobile, the foot wearing a special boot. The surgeon cuts on the top of the thigh, only far enough to reach the muscles that he parts rather than cuts, helping speed post-surgery recovery. Then the leg is maneuvered for doctors to pull apart the joint and reach the arthritic femur where the sclerotic top is sawed off. A metal piece is inserted into the remaining femur bone. A ceramic ball which acts as the new ball is screwed on the top of the metal piece.
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