Why Six?

Last year a good friend from high school learned I was going to have shoulder replacement surgery. He had just finished rehab following his shoulder surgery and wanted to offer his support. When he learned that I am somewhat an old hand at joint replacement surgery we both got a good laugh.

At the root of all six of my replaced joints is osteoarthritis, the kind of arthritis people get as they age, and often can be traced to repetitive motion, such as running or jogging. Those are two activities I just could not master.

Eventually, I learned why. In the summer of 2000 I began to have intermittent pain in my right hip. Several x-rays showed no obvious reason why my right hip hurt. There were hints: after long drives to visit family in Pennsylvania and Virginia I would have a throbbing kind of discomfort in that hip. I would ask my children to "just pull on it."  It felt as if they could pull "just so" the pain would go away. But it never worked.

That August, Jim, our son Brian and I went to San Diego to visit our oldest daughter Kirsten. The morning before we were to leave I had excruciating hip pain, saw 2 doctors, and when no reason for my pain was apparent one of the doctors suggested I use a cane during our trip. It was love at first limp! The cane helped immeasurably, and when the cane immediately bumped us to the front of the line at every attraction at Universal Studios Kirsten and Brian instructed me to keep using the dreaded thing.

Using the cane that August seemed to cure whatever was the problem for over a year. But then, in the fall of 2001 the pain came back with a vengeance. A series of fortunate encounters led me to Dr Thomas King, an orthopedic surgeon in Portsmouth, NH. During my first visit to Dr King's office he took an x-ray and promptly made an unexpected diagnosis: I had a dislocated hip. And it looked as though as I have had it since birth. From the x-ray Dr King could tell I had significant damage to my right hip joint and was walking "bone on bone." I needed a total hip replacement.

Receiving the diagnosis was liking being a contestant on The Price is Right winning at the game Plinko. You know the game where the contestant climbs above a large Plinko game board and drops chips into slots; each slot has a cash reward; the goal is to earn as much money as possible. In MY Plinko, hearing I had a dislocated hip was like winning the game. The pieces of my life related to my hip pain finally fell in place.

And so, in January 2002, at age 54 and a half, I had my first joint replacement surgery. Because it was a "traditional" posterior replacement I was required to spend about 6 weeks in bed, or sitting in a chair with my right hip at at 90 degree angle--or less. I knit a sweater, watched the Patriots win their first Super Bowl, and read countless books during that time. But it was worth it. I have no hip pain.  There are some maneuvers I can't make with my right hip, or make weirdly, such as getting behind the driver's seat. It is the only time I remember that parts of my hip are not my own. And for this I am very grateful.

I suspect that both my knee replacements are collateral damage from however I swam around in my mother's womb that caused me to have the hip dysplasia in the first place. But I also inherited my mother's ability to make osteoarthritis.

So to sum up:
January 2002--right hip replacement
May 2013--right knee replacement
August 2013-left knee replacement
October 2014--left shoulder (reverse)  replacement
August 2015--left hip replacement (anterior procedure)
December 2016--right shoulder (reverse) replacement

I am grateful that each surgery worked so well, and grateful to the surgeons at Atlantic Orthopedics and Sports Medicine (Portsmouth NH), the physical therapists at York (Maine) Hospital and Saco Bay Sports Physical Therapy. And I am really grateful to my family for their love and care through it all.

And now that that is out of the way I can focus on the rest of my stories!