Today marks two weeks since they cut open my leg, sawed off the top of my femur, drilled down into the largest bone in my body, and implanted two pieces of titanium designed to carry half my body wherever it needs to go for the next forty years. It's been tough - in many ways more difficult than I could have imagined - but I think I've risen to the challenge.Last night I decided to try for another milestone, so as Hettie set out to walk the dogs on our approximately 1-mile course, I grabbed the crutches and went on down the street with her. I was slow and eventually dropped out of formation (Hettie and four Cairn terriers),
but I made it to the end of the street and back - maybe a little less than half the overall distance. I should note that before surgery I had only missed one day's walk in the previous three years - ice storms, heat waves, snow, wintry downpours, flu, cold, hip pain - I only missed one trip with the dogs - and I have to believe the neighbors noticed. So when I showed back up last night, on crutches, after a near two-week hiatus, a couple of them shouted out across the yards to me. One asked, "Did you get your knee done?" And another inquired, "What'd you do?" Both looked visibly disappointed at my simple answer: "Hip." Neither added a word that I recall.As Steve Martin used to say in the classic Saturday Night Live shows, "Excuuuse me!" Sorry I don't have some thrilling story to tell. Maybe I'll keep a list and just give those answers from now on: "Skydiving accident." "Formula One racing mishap." "Tiger Woods stress fracture." "The zip-line snapped." "Freedom fighting - but it's just a flesh-wound."
Arthroplasty - joint replacement, especially of the hip - just doesn't get people excited. As noted before in this blog, a knee or a rotator cuff... now that sounds like something an active person would need to have replaced. But hips are for old people. I'm assuming that's what people think because it's what I used to think. In confronting the prejudice of others, I've been forced to confront my own prejudice. For the past two weeks, I've gotten a dress-rehearsal in being old - and it's opened my eyes. Physical therapists half my age, asking if I needed a walker. Nurses who know me as nothing but some guy in a hospital gown who grits his teeth at the pain of getting out of bed. Backing into the front seat of Hettie's SUV, lifting my leg and pulling it into the vehicle while she stows my crutches. Most of that is behind me now - I have proved as much through hard work and determination - but the impact of that vulnerability will be with me forever.
And I've reached an interesting conclusion during this dress-rehearsal experience: Older people haven't somehow lost the edge... they haven't allowed themselves to become obsolete by somehow letting time pass them by. They've found the edge and honed it - they've survived more than most of us can ever imagine. They're not less than I am - they simply got on the train before I did and they've been riding it longer than I have. And in the process thereof, they've had to deal with a lot more than I have. And they've done so with dignity and self-confidence intact, even as the world, the culture, their families - their own bodies - try to take those things away from them. Now that I've been faced with a slice of what their daily lives must be like, I have to say that I'm pretty impressed with the eldest among us who've managed to keep moving, even in a very limited capacity. The world keeps evolving itself somehow toward youth - or at least culture does - and they're still managing to keep moving forward.
I'm sure this prejudice exists beyond just my former-self. I think it's everywhere. A day or two before my operation, I was at work when I heard one of our college interns talking to one of my coworkers. The vital topic was whether she (the intern) maintained a presence on
MySpace or Facebook. "Ew," she spat, distastefully. "MySpace is just so full of old people." Although I don't have a page on either site, I'm guessing that being in my late-40s easily qualifies me as being old in her mind. She's too busy considering what part of her face to get pierced next to think about much beyond herself, but there really is life beyond herself, beyond her age, beyond her experience. Having that perspective doesn't mean you're old as much as it means you're experienced. I really don't think I was that overtly self-centered when I was 21 or 22, but I probably had some of the same symptoms. And it's taken me more than two decades - in fact, it's taken a hip replacement operation - to come to grips with that.Growing older is not a weakness. Having a hard time getting around is not a sign of failure. Both are indications of achievement, of meeting and overcoming challenges, or adapting, of toughing it out. That's what this dress-rehearsal has taught me.
So, while I imagine (and maybe even wish) I had a more exciting story to tell my neighbors, the truth is that sometime many years ago the cartilage in one of the two largest joints in my body got compromised. The joint slowly deteriorated until it was just bone-on-bone, causing a pain so severe simply turned to the left could just about drop me to my knees. I gutted out the pain for several years, mostly keeping quiet about it, just trying to push through. But at some point it began to make my world a smaller place, to force me to focus more on myself than others... to take over my life and define my world. I tracked down the source of the pain and when I found it, I got rid of it. That took guts, courage, strength... and a lot of help. Fortunately for me, in a few
weeks I'll get back to acting more my age. Maybe a month or two from now (while the intern I mentioned is modifying her Facebook status or updating her iPod), I'll be face-down in a Caribbean reef or adjusting the rigging on a Hobie Cat. Or maybe just walking four Cairn terriers in a rain storm or hugging my wife after she's had a tough day.I'm OK with that - all of it. I hope it never, ever gets old - even if I do.
