HOME STATE HIP REPORT THREE WEEKS OUT

My home state is Oregon, the block that separates Washington from California over there on the left coast map of America.

If it was South America we’d all be Chile, but that’s not how it worked out.

Oregon has been good to me, which I suppose everyone says about where they live.

Portland, Oregon used to be shining light, a guide, a goal. It was for me.

I like to think I was the only one stepping off the Trailways bus in Old Town with Brooklyn grit on their shoes.

Could I start a new life with any more drama for 1980? I had help, and she was there waiting.

I got a job and an apartment in a part of town that reminded me of places I’d seen, places that looked like nicer places to live than where I was at the time.

The woman in waiting was probably ten years ahead of me on the maturing scale, though we were the same age. We lasted a few months.

The relationship she wanted had defined progress markers and we weren’t hitting our goals.

I thought I knew something about dating smart, driven, women.

I bought a bike.

The Oregon Difference

Three weeks ago I had my leg bone sawed and chiseled and fit with a prosthetic ball that would pop into the new space ground out in the hip socket.

It’s called hip replacement.

In the old days you’d be confined to a progression of limping, to cane, to walker, to wheelchair, to bed-ridden.

Move it back a few decades and you’d show up at a hospital the night before surgery and stay a week afterwards.

Today?

Drive over to a strip mall/professional buildings looking road with one story metal and glass structures trying not to look like cement wall tip-up buildings, get the hip, and home by 4:20.

Three Weeks Out And Closing

Drive up surgery is still surgery and comes with that thing that always follows surgery: Recovery from surgery.

Welcome to the first outpatient surgery center dedicated to complex cases. We are passionate about improving your level of health and helping you return to your active lifestyle.

With the surgical clinic the patients are screened before consideration. If you test out well, this is the place. If not, it’s a hospital, in this case OHSU on the hill or riverside, where they’re better equipped to deal with complications.

Sometimes no complications feels like no big deal, except it’s important to remember that a replaced hip already had muscle weakness and the surgery weakened it further.

To make it more interesting and painful, going in from the front means moving muscles around instead of snipping and reattaching tendons.

Experienced athletes like yours truly say it feels like the first day in the weight room where you focused only on legs, then ran five miles.

It’s still unreliable and weak now and I find myself explaining it’s hip surgery, not a lifestyle, to strangers.

No Strangers In A Home State

This was my home state parade. I wore my power shirt; they were Beavers.

We all laughed.

The parade included a gait belt and wheelchair in case of collapse. The socks are traction bottomed.

These pictures down the hallway remind me of a Monty Python bit where the horse rider keeps getting closer but never arrives.

New hip people talk about a new lease on life. I’m talking about flipping the switch.

I used to limp; I still limp.

My old limp was getting worse; my new limp will go away.

I never used to use a cane; I use a cane after I graduated from a walker.

The flow reversed from bedridden, to walker, to cane, to, to, let’s say I have high hopes.

I’ll score one for the home state after it all works out.

I keep wondering how it would have been somewhere else.

Empty?