TIMING MATTERS, AND NOW IT’S HIP TIME

 

Timing matters when it comes to personal health

Don’t wait too long, or jump too early, just be on time.

Call it good luck, serendipity, or negligence, but you’ll know when the time is right to act.

But not everyone is on the clock.

One of my favorite twitter guys, T. C. Boyle, has a follower who had a hip replaced a few weeks ago.

He sounds miserable, which is twitter gold.

Twitter is a platform where people can write into the void of online darkness.

People post about their husband dying last night, their dog dying that morning, plants drying up.

And the torture of hip replacement recovery.

The polite thing to do is not jump into someone else’s communication breakdown.

But what if you feel you have ‘so much in common’ with an online stranger?

Yes, I jumped in. The man is floundering, so why not help?

So that’s what I did. And of course it didn’t go as planned.

 

BoomerPdx Medical Advice For Free

 

When it comes to fixing broken things, timing matters.

I tolerated a funky hip for way too long.

The idea was to wait it out. Since I plan a long life, and a hip replacement has an expiration date, I only wanted to do it once.

My hip guy on twitter didn’t wait too long, but now his recovery sounds like hell.

He’s a good patient. I don’t know where he’s from, or where he had the work done, but he’s following medical advice.

Did I mention how miserable he sounds? I could screen shot his posts, but it’s not helpful.

I told about my good response to medical weed, he countered with oxy.

Where does it go after that?

It’s a painful question.

 

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The whole ordeal of getting a hip fixed is based on pain tolerance.

Doctor: You need your hip replaced.

Me: When?

Doctor: You’ll know when.

Me: How will I know. You’re the doctor.

Doctor: You’ll know when the pain becomes intolerable.

Me: Are you saying timing matters?

Doctor: When it comes to making a decision like this, yes.

 

Timing Matters For Personal Identity

 

How often do you hear, “Be your best self?”

It reminds me of a Willie Nelson song about a wonderful future behind him.

You either find your best self in a foggy past hard to remember, so it must have been good, or glimpses of those times in your everyday life.

Depressed old men suit up in their military related gear for parades to show how much they once mattered.

Depressed young men go on rampages because they’ll never matter as much as the old guys.

Then there’s the rest of us trying to fit in.

We were at our best in high school? College? Our twenties to early thirties?

Instead of regret and remorse for the past, I see people doing worthwhile stuff now and it reminds me of back then.

I’m sixty-seven, so ‘back then’ is the Seventies.

Too often ‘back then’ is related to ‘Back Home’ and that’s when things start tumbling.

My dad put it this way: “Things start stacking up faster and faster and it gets heavy, too heavy.”

He said that the day I called him and he started talking about a broken egg.

After I hung up I called his wife and asked how he was doing. He went downhill from there, one small stroke after another.

Trying times don’t stack up as fast if you deal with problems as they occur without reflecting back on similar problems that turned out bad.

For instance, I discovered my support system is good for about a weeks worth of being laid up.

But I needed two weeks at least, maybe more. So I coached them up, made pledges of future help for them, and worked it out from there. Does that sound like begging?

They came through while doubting if I needed as much help as I asked for.

 

Recovery Timing Matters

 

Doctors release patients to go about their daily lives.

Get off the oxy and you get released to drive.

Find your strength returning and you get released to ditch the cane.

Check with the doctor before doing anything different?

Yes, and run some ideas past them ahead of time.

No one agrees with the idea that weed is comparable to oxy for pain management.

In a world where everyone’s response is different, it can be.

What I’m saying is medical marijuana, the same edible chews sold in Oregon weed stores, was surprisingly effective the first week. And the second.

But the second week brought with it muscle pain in my thigh, not the dull bone ache I expected.

I’ve had aches and pains worse than hip replacement recovery, which are words I never expected to write.

 

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The notion of human kindness is one of not kicking someone when they are down, and hip replacement is a great example of being down.

In fact, more than down. You’re crippled.

It’s a shocking thing to wake up and wonder if you did the right thing because it hurts so damn bad.

The mental part of the work is knowing you’ll bounce back. Eventually.

Eventually you’ll walk through a pothole filled meadow without thinking you’ll tweak your old hip and take a dive.

Your confidence will return and you’ll walk the earth like Johnny Appleseed putting one foot in front of the other in all terrain, spreading the goodwill of your own.

In the meantime, pick a sports contest to watch and marvel at the human bodies ability to perform.

I recommend a track meet. Those people go through every range of motion imaginable.

The only sport with more range of motion is amateur wrestling, but some of that is forced range of motion.

You have the same bones as any of them. We’re all upright and moving based on three things.

Two of them are hip bones, the other is the will to get through hard times knowing they won’t last but you will.

That’s what you’re doing? You’ve got all three?

Keep it up.