Walkin’, yes indeed, and I’m talkin’…

Last time, I was about to get a new right hip; it was supposed to happen on the 9th of December but due to an unusual set of circumstances, Laurie and I ended up being told, at 6 p.m., that the surgery wasn’t going to happen that day.

(The day of fasting and prep was part of the annoyance…the fact that we’d come over to Boston and checked Laurie into a guest house at the hospital and would have to extract her from that was another…and since Laurie isn’t a great Interstate driver in the winter, the fact that we’d taken the train from Providence made it a late night getting home.)

Best face on disaster: We were called on Wednesday and told that the surgery would happen on Saturday morning, so Friday night we spent the night in Boston at the Omni Parker House, having supper  in their wonderful paneled dining room and having – surprise! – Parker House rolls to accompany dinner. Growing up I never realised that Parker House rolls were anything but some euphemistic brand name (like Catherine Clarke Brownberry Bread – which mother always called Helen Gates bread). 

Surgery on a Saturday morning when no other surgeries are going on is kind of intimate. Laurie sat by me during the preparations, watching me disappear down the hall as they administered the IV tranquilizers. The long and the short of it is that by Tuesday afternoon I was out of the hospital and home; three and a half weeks later, I was told I could shed the crutches and cane and drive again.

This week I’ve gone back out to walk through Colt State Park (I was a little leery of trying it before because we’ve had plenty of ice and a good bit of snow, so I was using the treadmill in the condo). This morning the fragmites along the Mill Gut looked sparkly in the early morning sun….

Western edge of the Mill Gut, 7:30 a.m. and 14 degrees F.

So the hip is  a great success. Betty Brito (who’s had both hips replaced) told me that the most impressive thing about the surgery would be that I would suddenly have no pain. At all. And she was right. There are sorenesses and little tweaks, but they have to do with the surgery, not the hip.

And, if I have a recommendation for anyone facing hip replacement surgery it would be that you should keep exercising as much as possible before the surgery. The (former) runner in me kept me trying to be as balanced and symmetrical as possible in my gait and to ignore – as much as I could – the pain. I think that the fact that my muscles were in balance and in good tone was what made the difference in coming back from the surgery quickly.