(Cover photo: Split before surgery.)
Twenty-three days ago I had hip replacement surgery (left side), and the recovery proceeds apace. Gradually strength is returning, and my gait returns to normal — or at least something close to it. More importantly, the pain is gone. In all candor, I didn’t realize how bad all of it had become until it stopped.
For several days my brain kept warning me against this motion or that flex, except that these movements were not greeted with sheer agony as had been the case just about every day for at least four years. Seems my brain also needed retraining. Its bulletins are gentler now: “Rog, just avoid falling down a mine shaft and screwing up this second chance.”
Duly resolved.
This fresh new human-made implant, installed by Dr. Yerasimides to take the place of a mangled knot of cartilage and bone, strikes me as one of the finest Christmas gifts I’ve ever received. Conversely, I’m aware that while the outcome might seem “miraculous,” hip replacement expertise itself is not a “miracle” out of nowhere.
The state of the American health care delivery system in terms of availability is another topic, but there’s little doubt in my mind that the very existence of anterior hip replacement surgery testifies to sheer brilliance on the part of the medical community. I’m grateful to have had access to it, and our collective goal as a society should be for everyone in need of such a procedure to be able to have it.
Each morning since my own surgery, I’ve taken a moment to reflect on the long centuries when there was no curative, and no way to relieve the pain I’ve been experiencing. There’d have been no respite until death. I’m exceedingly fortunate to be right here, right now.
Most of what my own procedure cost was covered by insurance, and we can handle the out-of-pocket expenses without very much additional stress. But it appalls me to live in a state of purported “civilization” in which matters like this (and so many other medical issues) are pursued by random spins of the wheel, and subsequent bankruptcies.
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On a more general note as 2025 nears, the past two years have proven to be unusually turbulent in my world outside of home and marriage. Any thoughts I once entertained about my early sixties being a copacetic period of time have been subjected to emergency revision on more than once occasion.
I’ve been “aged” out of a job by a charlatan who I made the mistake of trusting, and this and other friendships have ended. Explanations have been either contrived or non-existent. These situations can lead to embitterment, and I won’t deny that I’ve felt it, especially about my former employer. Time is healing these psychological wounds, just as my hip gets better by the day.
Pete nailed it: “Then I’ll get on my knees and pray…we don’t get fooled again.”
Friendships are valuable. I’ve always felt that to respect a friend is to acknowledge his or her absolute freedom to end the friendship, with or without cause or explanation.
Acceptance is really hard to do when you’ve had no say, but the task is easier in the absence of choice. It remains that sometimes people turn on you. Unfortunately this happens, and you move on while trying to keep the good times foremost in your memory. To heal, one must let it go. I keep trying, with varying degrees of success.
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For a very long time, I’ve sought to arise each morning and create something with words. It might be a blog post, another chapter of “40 Years in Beer,” or a simple turn of phrase in thanks to a bartender for serving me a beer.
Apart from words, most often used in writing, but every now and then spoken aloud, I’m useless in most other ways. Writing remains a compulsion. It would take place each day like clockwork even if remuneration wasn’t involved (and I appreciate my residency at Food & Dining Magazine).
I’ll keep pushing, and perhaps someday there’ll be critical mass. Thanks to everyone who reads, whether it’s my words or someone else’s.
In the interim, I’ll be 65 in August, as yet hopeful of waiting until age 67 to file for social security. However, the Medicare process is landing now. That should keep me busy.
Our visit to North Macedonia and Albania is coming in February and will be the first big test of my physical condition (sans cane). Diana’s job at the VA is going well. Mila, the eldest cat, keeps redeeming her nine lives, one after the next. Knowing that she’s likely to be in the home stretch is encouragement to step away from the computer regularly and listen to the purring.
I’m not sure why I felt that these things needed to be said.
Part of it is a belated recognition that physical pain can affect one’s outlook and perspective. I’m chewing on this, less as a means of rehashing the past than expressing optimism about the future.
For me, walking and biking have always been mental health supplements first, and exercise second. Biking reemerged in 2024 because the bad hip didn’t object to it. This was encouraging, and it will be better in 2025, along with a return to purposeful strolling.
Whatever else happens, it happens. That’s not fatalism, but some sort of Zen (at least I hope). To my remaining friends of all ages, sexes and persuasions, may 2025 be a happy and rewarding year.
(Insert smiley face if necessary; after all, HyperCars is moving.)
And, if Diana is reading:
Thank you very much!
Thank you very much!
You’re the most wonderful thing that’s ever happened to me
