Long Term Report

I had planned on providing a running, day-to-day report of my progress after the surgery.
Didn't.
Belated catch-up report.
The 3 days in the hospital at UCSF were not fun. (The first time I'd ever spent a day/night in a hospital.)
But by the 3rd day I was walking the hallways with crutches.
And walked out of the hospital with just a cane and went to stay with my friends Michael and Marji who had set up a ground-floor room for me. (Thank you, thank you.) They had set up everything so that I could spend the next month or two there while I recuperated.
Within a few days I was walking (with a cane) to the grocery store.
Within one week, I was back on-line and working.
Within two weeks, I was ready to go home and fend for myself. Michael & Marji drove me back home. Some other friends drove me to UCSF for my two week checkup. All signs were good.
So, 15 days after surgery, I resumed driving.
Sixteen days after surgery, I drove myself to a yoga class. I couldn't do lots of things and was very cautious, but it felt really good to be back in my 'real' life.

Ah, and here's a picture of the shiny new hip - 1.5 pounds of titanium and chromium. Sweet.

(Click the picture to zoom.)

Time to Act

It was getting too hard to even get around. I would go to the gym at Google 3 mornings a week - but some mornings it was all I could do to walk up the stairs after my 45 minute drive and walk into the gym. I was hobbling badly.

So I scheduled the surgery and just went for it. July 19. Check in at 6am. Surgery at 7:30.

My son Kyle was my hero. Picked me up at 5:30am and drove me to UCSF - no turning back. (And Kyle was still there at 11pm as I was drifting in and out of a morphine-induced haze. I had told him that I was worried about that first night in the recovery room so he had resolved to sit there through the night. I felt clear enough by midnight that I asked him to go home - but I'll always appreciate his love and support. ... I had never spent a night in a hospital before. What a wimp.)

Picking a Surgeon

So, from Jimmy Connor's website, I could search for surgeons that used the same technologies and surgical approaches. That led me to Kevin Bozic at the UCSF Medical Center. It took over a month to get an appointment with him but when we met I had a list of questions.

He not only answered them all to my satisfaction, but he answered them before I asked them ... and in the same order that I had written them down!! Hmm. I think we're on the same page.

I had some new xrays taken that morning before I met Dr Bozic. It had been 3-4 years since I'd had xrays taken. The hip had gotten worse. Here's what it looked like (click on the image to zoom)
My right hip (on the left in this picture) was just a confused mass of bone and bone spurs. Compare and contrast with the good hip where there is a identifiable ball buffered from the socket/joint by cartilage. All long gone on the bad hip. No wonder it ain't working so good. Or feeling very good. Ouch!

Due diligence

I've been researching osteoarthritis and hip replacement technologies for the last 5 years or more. Getting weekly summaries from Google Alerts on the topics. A few months back I read a Google alert that pointed me at a website by Jimmy Connors - a famous tennis player from the 80s. Jimmy had his hip replaced recently and liked the results so much that he'd become a spokesman for the company that made the hip (and promoted a particular surgical technique.) From that website, I located a surgeon that used the same technology and technique.

Yoga is good but .. not a cure

So I've been doing yoga for the last 6 years or so and I believe it has helped tremendously as I've coped with the advancing problem of osteoarthritis. It has helped maintain some strength and flexibility in my right hip so that I've been able to mostly function ok. Constant pain for sure, but I could mostly do what I need to do. Drive, work, walk, even take some 10-20 mile bike rides. But everything gets harder. And the pain increases - haven't had a full night of sleep in many years.

The deciding events for me came around Christmas of 06. I went to Cancun with a couple of my sisters and their kids - same as last year ('05). But last year I did Scuba. This time - I knew I couldn't carry a heavy air tank onto a rocking boat - my hip was just too weak and unstable. And even hiking into the village became difficult. Finally, while at a company event at Lake Tahoe (Google's annual snow day) I hit a point where I couldn't walk back to my hotel room and had to be helped by my co-workers.

Time to act.

Yoga is better

I had never done yoga but decided to try it in an attempt to stay fit. Obviously it would be easier on my painful hip than the concussive shocks of running. I found out about a teacher nearby who taught in a very cool location just a few feet from the beach just 3 miles down the road from my house.

I was SO lucky! I had happened upon a teacher - Klaus Lehrach - that not only knew the physical part of yoga, the asanas (poses), but also knew and taught the underlying philosophy of yoga. And! He was funny! I've learned since that most yoga teachers and classes are serious - even stern. Klaus' classes are enlivened by his appreciation of the absurdity of the human condition.

Another huge, unexpected side effect was that I connected with a community - a large group of people who, though they came from varied backgrounds, shared an interest in yoga practice - both the physical and philosophical aspects. Many of my best friends are the folks that I've met in Klaus' classes.

But I digress.

Too Much Running

I started running, very slowly, in 1977. Within a year I did my first marathon. I did a half dozen marathons before cutting back to shorter distances - marathons weren't getting any easier and I wasn't getting any faster. It also took a lot of time training. I was running about 70 miles a week which, at my running speed took quite a while.

So, I settled into a routine of running 30-40 miles a week. I kept that up for nearly 25 years. Hmm, that adds up to over 35,000 miles - the equivalent of running around the world one and a half times. Then, just for fun, I started playing basketball 5 or 6 hours a week on concrete courts. It was indeed a lot of fun so I did it for about 7 years in the '90s. The last year or two I started having some pain in my right hip. It would usually go away after I got warmed up so I didn't pay much attention to it. And I thought it was some muscle-related pain - it never occurred to me that the actual hip joint could be wearing out.

Doh!

Finally I saw an orthopedic surgeon about 7 years ago. It took him about 30 seconds to diagnose the problem - most of the cartilage in the right hip was gone and there was bone-on-bone contact. Now that I understood the problem, I ... continued running for about another year, albeit less often and fewer miles. It hurt.

About 6 years ago it had become too painful to run and I started doing yoga instead - about 3 or 4 years too late, I fear.