You could say I learned to tolerate pain from a young age. By 14, I could tell you how bone-on-bone pain felt between the top of my right legbone and my hip socket. (Answer? Not good.) Then came what I call ‘the body cast era.’ That was when the pain got really bad.
A teenager in traction
On crutches after surgery to hold the cartilage in place on my leg bone, I slipped on a piece of paper at school. My right femur shattered and was driven beyond my hip socket – as agonizing as it sounds. Six weeks in traction, and my right leg was still nearly an inch shorter than my left. Doctors wanted me to wear a shoe lift, but… tell a kid to wear a shoe lift? Suffice to say that by age 23, the imbalance in my legs had worn out the cartilage in my left hip socket too.
Decades of pain
Fast forward to 2020. 27 years of arthritis pain later. Anti-inflammatories every day – ibuprofen, naproxen – and still I had a pronounced limp and constant, worsening pain. By age 51, I had to walk with a cane. I knew I needed hip replacements, but I’d heard so many bad stories. I kept wondering, ‘Is this going to be my story too?’ But St. Helena Hospital’s Coon Joint Replacement Institute – or CJRI – had good stories to tell. So in February of 2021, I had my first hip replacement surgery. Results were so good that in May, I had my second hip replaced.
Happy birthday, hips!
Let me tell you: there’s a big difference between the searing, life-limiting joint pain I felt all those years, and recovery pain. That’s healing pain. The kind that says you’re getting better. And I did. Today I celebrate the first Thursdays in February and May – my hip birthdays. I feel better than I did in my 30s. Before my first surgery, I bought a Six Million Dollar Man t-shirt. That was my whole thing, like the TV show – better, stronger, faster, we can rebuild him. That’s just what happened. St. Helena Hospital rebuilt me. And if you’re living with hip and knee pain, they can rebuild you, too.
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