Hip-Hop!
I’m sitting in the examination room in my orthopedic surgeon’s office with his Physicians Assistant. She holds in her hand an x-ray of my right hip. “We don’t tell anyone when to have this surgery,” she says. “Most people just know.”
I tell her that’s where I am. Five years I’ve been dancing on his worn out stick of a femur and I’m tired of being the old guy limping across the supermarket parking lot having bypassed the designated “Senior” parking space because I refuse to appear to have succumbed to God’s Universal Design for Atrophy.
“Have a hard time tying your shoes?” she asks.
“No.”
“Really?” she says. “Wow, most people…”
“I quit wearing shoes,” I say.
She marks that down. “A lot of our patients,” she says, “say they’ve had to start planning their daily schedules around the pain.”
“Not me,” I say.
She shakes her head again. “Really?”
“I quit planning a daily schedule in favor of twenty-four hour groaning.”
She marks that down also. “Are you familiar with the total hip replacement procedure?”
I confess a certain ignorance.
“Well, basically the Dr. slices open your upper leg, takes off the top of your femur with a power saw, hammers a titanium post attached to a ceramic ball into the marrow, inserts a ceramic socket, and Viola! hip is good as new. Better.”
She studies my face: “Put your head between your knees. Deep breaths.”
“He saws off my femur,” I say when I can.
She nods.
“…hammers a titanium spike into the bone…”
She nods again. “A very simple operation, actually.”
“Is this guy a surgeon or an industrial carpenter?”
She smiles. “I find your sense of humor refreshing.”
So then I get to meet the magician who’s going to wave his magic power saw and set my life back twenty years and all doubt dissipates. From twenty paces I see his steady hands; steely eyes you’d send away for, and a confidence that embraces you when he enters the room. This isn’t a doctor you’d allow to remove just your hip. You’d let this guy remove your children.
Day of the surgery I show at five thirty a.m. and by six thirty I’m prepped and ready; don’t even have time to reconstruct in my imagination the initial carnage necessarily created to then rearrange my infrastructure. The anesthesiologist asks whether, following my spinal, I’d rather be rendered unconscious or left semi-aware for the surgery itself. Either way I won’t feel a thing. I opt for as close to dead as possible without brain damage, thank you. He smiles and says, “Good choice.” I smile back, and a nurse says, “How are you feeling?” and like THAT, two hours have passed and I am risen; reconstructed!
I sit in a recliner for the rest of the day with a tube protruding from my pecker relieving me from the once-every-two-hour trip to the restroom I’ve had to insert into my daily schedule for the last four years, pledging homage to any church willing to supplant the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ with hydrocodone.
Next day: One session of in-house group re-hab and I’m gettin’ cut loose. Man I scorched those geezers and I let ‘em know it, and curse them for jeering me as I made my early exit, calling me the Larry Bird of crippled trash-talkers and repeating those ghastly insults about my sainted mother, God rest her soul. Neener neener, catch me if you can, you posers with the sissy wheels on your walkers.
This hydro is some good shit!
So then I’m home, to which I am confined because it’ll be weeks before I can drive, relying on loved ones, which you can count on one partially amputated hand, to transport me any distance beyond my driveway. An in-home nurse is scheduled to check on me twice a week, a physical therapist three times. Within two days I have cast my walker into the Goodwill pile, opting for a shiny new candy-apple red cane. A racing cane really. First day on the cane I log a couple hundred yards, but quickly up it to a half mile. Back off, you Medicare wannabes, I’m comeback player of the year!
Gotta LOVE this hydro.
But at the same time I’m suffering a loss of masculinity, a reduction in my Stotan status around the neighborhood. In the past twenty-five years my neighbors have witnessed daily as I shot past in my Steve Prefontaine Nikes or hammered away on my mountain bike waving to all as I breezed by. Now they don’t make eye contact, gazing into their flower gardens or at the ground a foot in front of their lawnmowers as I shuffle by.
Fifth day on the cane temperatures cool and we get long-needed rain. I’ve been dressing in T-shirts and loose fitting shorts to protect my incision from undue friction but today is chillier and I hunt through my closet for something warmer, but looser, than my traditional Levis. In the corner of my closet I happen onto the one pair of khakis I haven’t thrown out and pull them on. Plenty of room; I’ve got the skinniest butt of any non eating-disordered member of our species, regardless of gender. My butt cheeks are simply the vortex of my legs. I cover my T-shirt with sweatshirt – a gift from a “Vikings” high school visit sometime in the past couple of years – slide my feet into my slip-ons, snatch my cane, clamp my earphones over my SF Giants baseball cap pulled low on my brow, crank up “The Killers” on my iPhone and take to the highway. In my mind I’m this year’s AARP Comeback Kid, striding on my victory lap through the neighborhood.
I get lost.
I’ve been staring at the street directly in front of me to avoid that misstep that could leave me on my back waving my arms and one good leg like an overturned partially paralyzed turtle, paying no attention to how many turns I’ve made, when, unbeknownst to me, my geographic dyslexia kicks in. I come to, gaze around the neighborhood. I might as well be in Cleveland.
Oh, GAWD, I’ve lived in this neighborhood for twenty-five years and I’m faced with the possibility of having to ASK DIRECTIONS to my house. I’m an American male; I’d soak my testicles in battery acid before asking directions. So I do what real men do: I guess.
A mile or so later I recognize my driveway, maybe a hundred yards in the distance. My hip is on fire and I’m dragging my leg like a dead tree limb, but I have avoided embarrassment and, well, what’s more important than that?
Inside, I limp into my bedroom catching a glimpse of myself in the full length mirror at the foot of my bed before total collapse. The khakis are far baggier than I pictured, inching earthward as I watch. Somehow the “Viking” sweatshirt I thought looked so jock-y, for some reason now appears more like one of those sweatshirts with teddy bears quilted on the front that my mother wore in her later years to hide the humiliation brought on by gravity’s relentless pull. I neglected to go for a haircut prior to surgery, so white strands protrude below the sides of my Giants cap, and it would have been nice if someone, somewhere, had advised me there’s a gizmo you can get from Amazon.com to trim your ear hairs.
It could be worse. I could be wearing Crocs.
I stand a moment longer gazing at my mirror image. Sweet Jesus, when did I turn into Bruce Dern?
I write the above in humble conciliation; to the members of my hospital re-hab group. There is some possibility I may have trash-talked too soon. But maybe not. Let me down a couple of these hydros and think it over.
I tell her that’s where I am. Five years I’ve been dancing on his worn out stick of a femur and I’m tired of being the old guy limping across the supermarket parking lot having bypassed the designated “Senior” parking space because I refuse to appear to have succumbed to God’s Universal Design for Atrophy.
“Have a hard time tying your shoes?” she asks.
“No.”
“Really?” she says. “Wow, most people…”
“I quit wearing shoes,” I say.
She marks that down. “A lot of our patients,” she says, “say they’ve had to start planning their daily schedules around the pain.”
“Not me,” I say.
She shakes her head again. “Really?”
“I quit planning a daily schedule in favor of twenty-four hour groaning.”
She marks that down also. “Are you familiar with the total hip replacement procedure?”
I confess a certain ignorance.
“Well, basically the Dr. slices open your upper leg, takes off the top of your femur with a power saw, hammers a titanium post attached to a ceramic ball into the marrow, inserts a ceramic socket, and Viola! hip is good as new. Better.”
She studies my face: “Put your head between your knees. Deep breaths.”
“He saws off my femur,” I say when I can.
She nods.
“…hammers a titanium spike into the bone…”
She nods again. “A very simple operation, actually.”
“Is this guy a surgeon or an industrial carpenter?”
She smiles. “I find your sense of humor refreshing.”
So then I get to meet the magician who’s going to wave his magic power saw and set my life back twenty years and all doubt dissipates. From twenty paces I see his steady hands; steely eyes you’d send away for, and a confidence that embraces you when he enters the room. This isn’t a doctor you’d allow to remove just your hip. You’d let this guy remove your children.
Day of the surgery I show at five thirty a.m. and by six thirty I’m prepped and ready; don’t even have time to reconstruct in my imagination the initial carnage necessarily created to then rearrange my infrastructure. The anesthesiologist asks whether, following my spinal, I’d rather be rendered unconscious or left semi-aware for the surgery itself. Either way I won’t feel a thing. I opt for as close to dead as possible without brain damage, thank you. He smiles and says, “Good choice.” I smile back, and a nurse says, “How are you feeling?” and like THAT, two hours have passed and I am risen; reconstructed!
I sit in a recliner for the rest of the day with a tube protruding from my pecker relieving me from the once-every-two-hour trip to the restroom I’ve had to insert into my daily schedule for the last four years, pledging homage to any church willing to supplant the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ with hydrocodone.
Next day: One session of in-house group re-hab and I’m gettin’ cut loose. Man I scorched those geezers and I let ‘em know it, and curse them for jeering me as I made my early exit, calling me the Larry Bird of crippled trash-talkers and repeating those ghastly insults about my sainted mother, God rest her soul. Neener neener, catch me if you can, you posers with the sissy wheels on your walkers.
This hydro is some good shit!
So then I’m home, to which I am confined because it’ll be weeks before I can drive, relying on loved ones, which you can count on one partially amputated hand, to transport me any distance beyond my driveway. An in-home nurse is scheduled to check on me twice a week, a physical therapist three times. Within two days I have cast my walker into the Goodwill pile, opting for a shiny new candy-apple red cane. A racing cane really. First day on the cane I log a couple hundred yards, but quickly up it to a half mile. Back off, you Medicare wannabes, I’m comeback player of the year!
Gotta LOVE this hydro.
But at the same time I’m suffering a loss of masculinity, a reduction in my Stotan status around the neighborhood. In the past twenty-five years my neighbors have witnessed daily as I shot past in my Steve Prefontaine Nikes or hammered away on my mountain bike waving to all as I breezed by. Now they don’t make eye contact, gazing into their flower gardens or at the ground a foot in front of their lawnmowers as I shuffle by.
Fifth day on the cane temperatures cool and we get long-needed rain. I’ve been dressing in T-shirts and loose fitting shorts to protect my incision from undue friction but today is chillier and I hunt through my closet for something warmer, but looser, than my traditional Levis. In the corner of my closet I happen onto the one pair of khakis I haven’t thrown out and pull them on. Plenty of room; I’ve got the skinniest butt of any non eating-disordered member of our species, regardless of gender. My butt cheeks are simply the vortex of my legs. I cover my T-shirt with sweatshirt – a gift from a “Vikings” high school visit sometime in the past couple of years – slide my feet into my slip-ons, snatch my cane, clamp my earphones over my SF Giants baseball cap pulled low on my brow, crank up “The Killers” on my iPhone and take to the highway. In my mind I’m this year’s AARP Comeback Kid, striding on my victory lap through the neighborhood.
I get lost.
I’ve been staring at the street directly in front of me to avoid that misstep that could leave me on my back waving my arms and one good leg like an overturned partially paralyzed turtle, paying no attention to how many turns I’ve made, when, unbeknownst to me, my geographic dyslexia kicks in. I come to, gaze around the neighborhood. I might as well be in Cleveland.
Oh, GAWD, I’ve lived in this neighborhood for twenty-five years and I’m faced with the possibility of having to ASK DIRECTIONS to my house. I’m an American male; I’d soak my testicles in battery acid before asking directions. So I do what real men do: I guess.
A mile or so later I recognize my driveway, maybe a hundred yards in the distance. My hip is on fire and I’m dragging my leg like a dead tree limb, but I have avoided embarrassment and, well, what’s more important than that?
Inside, I limp into my bedroom catching a glimpse of myself in the full length mirror at the foot of my bed before total collapse. The khakis are far baggier than I pictured, inching earthward as I watch. Somehow the “Viking” sweatshirt I thought looked so jock-y, for some reason now appears more like one of those sweatshirts with teddy bears quilted on the front that my mother wore in her later years to hide the humiliation brought on by gravity’s relentless pull. I neglected to go for a haircut prior to surgery, so white strands protrude below the sides of my Giants cap, and it would have been nice if someone, somewhere, had advised me there’s a gizmo you can get from Amazon.com to trim your ear hairs.
It could be worse. I could be wearing Crocs.
I stand a moment longer gazing at my mirror image. Sweet Jesus, when did I turn into Bruce Dern?
I write the above in humble conciliation; to the members of my hospital re-hab group. There is some possibility I may have trash-talked too soon. But maybe not. Let me down a couple of these hydros and think it over.