(Cover photo: Split before surgery.)
Twenty-three days ago I had hip replacement surgery (left side), and the recovery proceeds apace. Gradually strength is returning, and my gait returns to normal — or at least something close to it. More importantly, the pain is gone. In all candor, I didn’t realize how bad all of it had become until it stopped.
For several days my brain kept warning me against this motion or that flex, except that these movements were not greeted with sheer agony as had been the case just about every day for at least four years. Seems my brain also needed retraining. Its bulletins are gentler now: “Rog, just avoid falling down a mine shaft and screwing up this second chance.”
Duly resolved.
This fresh new human-made implant, installed by Dr. Yerasimides to take the place of a mangled knot of cartilage and bone, strikes me as one of the finest Christmas gifts I’ve ever received. Conversely, I’m aware that while the outcome might seem “miraculous,” hip replacement expertise itself is not a “miracle” out of nowhere.
The state of the American health care delivery system in terms of availability is another topic, but there’s little doubt in my mind that the very existence of anterior hip replacement surgery testifies to sheer brilliance on the part of the medical community. I’m grateful to have had access to it, and our collective goal as a society should be for everyone in need of such a procedure to be able to have it.
Each morning since my own surgery, I’ve taken a moment to reflect on the long centuries when there was no curative, and no way to relieve the pain I’ve been experiencing. There’d have been no respite until death. I’m exceedingly fortunate to be right here, right now.
Most of what my own procedure cost was covered by insurance, and we can handle the out-of-pocket expenses without very much additional stress. But it appalls me to live in a state of purported “civilization” in which matters like this (and so many other medical issues) are pursued by random spins of the wheel, and subsequent bankruptcies.
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On a more general note as 2025 nears, the past two years have proven to be unusually turbulent in my world outside of home and marriage. Any thoughts I once entertained about my early sixties being a copacetic period of time have been subjected to emergency revision on more than once...Read more
