Looking Back

Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Tomorrow will be the fifth anniversary of an event that changed the whole direction of my life. Back in 2020, just before COVID-19 closed down elective surgeries in hospitals across the nation, I was scheduled for a hip reconstruction. This was not classified as a replacement, a quite common procedure, but a complete reconstruction. At least that is what my orthopedic surgeon called it. At the time, he could not assure me that the procedure would even work. He warned me that he might not be able to fix things. He did not really say what the result of failure would be. I was to afraid to ask. It might have changed my mind, so I didn’t want to know.

When I was 11 years old, I was diagnosed with Legg-Perthes Disease in the right hip. The femoral head of my right leg was being deformed by Avascular Necrosis. That is to say, the ball of the leg had died due to lack of blood flow. It turned soft and was being crushed as I walked. That deformation would then start to tear away at the joint cartilage of my pelvis. Eventually the bone would re-harden, but the rough surface would continue to cause problems year after year. In addition, the ball was no longer round. So I lost motion in the joint because the oblong ball no longer fit in the round socket of the pelvis. To reduce the damage, I had to place no weight on my right leg until the bone re-hardened. That meant being restricted to crutches for about 1 1/2 years. There could be no walking, running, or playing. The only activities with which I could engage, were swimming, where I was nearly weightless in chest deep water, or bicycle riding, where all the weight is on the knee joint. I had to to do those 2 things as much as possible, in order to avoid muscle atrophy in the right leg.

At the end of the 1 1/2 year period, I could stop using the crutches and sling that held my foot off the ground, and re-learn how to walk. Even then, for the next 52 years, the cartilage was being slowly destroyed by the damaged bone. In the later years, there were less and less things I could do. I was unable to run or jog, and could barely make it around the grocery store to buy food. I’d given up on bike riding and cross country skiing. There was no hiking, wading in a trout stream, or backpacking. My balance was gone, due to muscle atrophy and loss of motion. And there was pain. You can build up a tolerance for that, but there were nights when I rolled up a wash cloth and clamped it with my teeth in order to keep myself quiet and avoid waking my boys in the middle of the night.

So, even though the odds of success weren’t great, I elected to have the surgery. I had waited until after my sons were old enough to be on their own. The surgeon scolded me for that, believing I had waited to long.

Fortunately, everything worked out. I was moved from the post-op recovery room to a bed for the night, where I immediately noticed 2 things. They had erased the 1 1/4 inch difference in length between my left and right legs, and the pain was gone. It was only then, that I realized I had been living with pain which I was not even recognizing. I only discovered it because there was a void in its place. Just nothing, almost like they took something out, and didn’t put it back before they sewed me back up.

Back to the point of this article, it has been 5 years and I no longer think much about my hip. I know there are certain things that happen in my subconscious that I catch occasionally. I tend to lead more with the left leg when going up and down stairs or climbing on a rocky trail. I automatically stiffen when stepping down from bleachers or hopping down from a log blocking a trail and leading with the right leg. I feel a little vibration up my spine during my foots concussion with the ground. I put my socks and shoes on a little differently depending on right or left foot. I think this is more of a habit then a necessity, a leftover from days when I struggled to do those things. I sometimes notice that my right foot is a little looser in it’s shoe than the left and my right pant leg is not as tight. This is due to lost muscle on the right. There is less muscle, but what is left is stronger muscle. Most people have a dominant leg. The right is stronger than the left and has more coordination, just like the right hand is stronger and better at writing than the left. For me, I think my body gets a little confused about which leg should be doing what.

My balance is getting better. This is a good thing, as soon I will heading north into Colorado. I want to spend a lot of days this summer, wading in slippery and rocky trout streams.

I never guessed I would be travelling around the mountains with a camper. Before my hip was repaired, I figured I would just be working at a desk until I was at least 70, waiting for Doordash to bring me food for lunch. It is sometimes odd how things work out.