Getting Hip

INTRODUCTION

Every year, almost 400,000 North Americans undergo joint replacement surgery. Arthritic hips, knees, shoulders and occasionally, ankles are replaced with metal and plastic implants.  Total hip replacements (THRs) constitute approximately half of these surgeries, allowing people who would otherwise be completely disabled by pain to resume full and active lives.

We are in the miraculous era of the Internet, the DVD, the CD player, the Cell Phone and the Palm Pilot.  It is easy to take these technological advances for granted and to forget that they were all developed and made accessible within the last twenty years. Likewise, the first successful total hip replacement was not performed until the early 1960s.  Fifty years ago, those who were afflicted by severe arthritis would have suffered relentless pain with no hope of effective treatment.  In many instances, they would have spent the rest of their days in a wheelchair. Dr. Seth Leopold, of the Orthopedics and Sports Medicine Department at the University of Washington, considers the total hip replacement to be the most important operation developed in the 20th century, in terms of the amount of human suffering that it has relieved.

In April of 2003, I was one of 17,500 Canadians who required a total hip replacement.  Many people have swift recoveries from hip surgery. The books that I read indicated that most people were able to dispense with their crutches about six to eight weeks after the operation, and that three months postoperatively, they felt relatively normal. This was not my experience nor was such a textbook recovery shared by all of the people that I interviewed.

I had a significant degree of pain and swelling in my leg that lingered for months after my THR. Although I was only 50 years old, which is young in the world of hip replacements, I needed to use a walker for more than ten weeks. I spent an additional eight weeks on a cane.  Instead of feeling well three months after the surgery, my hip did not feel anywhere near normal until five or six months postoperatively. At first, I thought that there was something wrong with me.  I felt inadequate and worried that something had gone wrong with my operation because it took me so long to regain my muscular strength and the ability to walk comfortably.  Then I created a web site about my experience and began talking to other people who had had the surgery. I learned that I was not alone. Not everyone had a speedy and painless recovery, although most people experienced considerably less pain than I did and regained mobility much faster than I had.  But many of those individuals whose recoveries went more smoothly than my own had complications or required multiple joint replacements.

I learned so much about total hip replacements that I wanted to share my experience and insights with other people to facilitate their recoveries.  I made mistakes that I would not repeat if I were to have the surgery again. And there is a good chance that I will need another hip replacement down the road since the average lifespan of an artificial joint is only 10 to 15 years. My hip replacement was the fourth major surgery that I had endured in my lifetime but unlike other surgeries, I was not able to sit back, relax and let time heal the wound.  I needed to be an active participant in my own rehabilitation. Information is power. If you are considering hip surgery, the more you learn beforehand, the better off you will be.

This book is geared towards people who are wondering if they need a total hip replacement and to those who are waiting for hip surgery.  It is also written for individuals who have already had their hips replaced, especially if they are under the age of 65, since there is a strong likelihood that they will have to have additional hip surgery.

GETTING HIP may serve as a useful tool for friends and relatives of people who are undergoing joint replacements. I offer a great deal of information about how I decided to have the surgery, what is involved in the preoperative exam, and the mechanics and history of the operation itself. In addition, I provide a detailed description of my own rehabilitation, from the time of the surgery to six months postoperatively, as well as advice on how to take care of a new artificial hip and a final chapter on the future of hip replacements.