To be steady on my feet…steady in my thoughts, I need balance.
First off, when balance is disturbed, my writing Muse muffles.
Shooting from a 26-year-old hip replacement, my decrepit spoke to me. At first, in quiet tones. Then, louder and more persistently. As a result, I became aware it was time to regain balance with hip revision surgery.
In the ensuing paragraphs, an old hip expresses herself, while providing some lesser-known, yet nonetheless ‘hip’ facts.
“I’m overdue…for a re-do,” it murmured. Then its larynx came unleashed.
The surgeon had suggested that my askew total hip replacement might give out. And yet, I was functional, so we waited.
The break-up came in the yarling: a combo of yawn and snarl. Crackle-pops reverberated.
“Don’t be afraid of it,” said a physio friend. “Be pro-active.”
X-rays proved it was yarlier and more off-kilter than most 26-year-olds (no offence, twenty-somethings).
Loose hip facts:
- Os coxae is not oxymoronic for the ‘Year of the Ox’.
- Hands on your hips, you’re gripping the iliac crest: the summit of a mountain ridge: one of three fused hip bones.
- In the valley are the pubis, and behind it, the ischium or ‘sit bones’.
- Rivers of veins, nerves and arteries flow through a pelvic canyon (obturator foramen).
- The pelvic ischium contains the ball-socket joint.
- In this weight-bearing core of breathing, posture and spinal stability, 20 muscles cross paths.
- Of over 250 primate species, only one primate is reading this while taking a load off two bi-pedaling legs.
If ‘hip were on the wall’ (as a proverbial ‘fly’):
Surgeon: (to his team) “Now that we’re in, this liner has to go.”
Yarler: “Are you removing my ‘voice box’, doc?”
Surgeon: “Let’s get behind the eroded socket.”
Yarler: “E-ro-ded, as in ‘ro-de-o’?”
Surgeon: “Cowboy, plastic bits in bloodstream turn bone to marshmallow (osteolysis).”
Yarler: “Bucking broncos.”
Surgeon: “Repack it with synthetic bone.”
Yarler: “Syn-the-tic? I’m too young…”
Surgeon: “Stem and socket look good. Leave the (tug, tug) titanium.”
Yarler: “Whoa, heavy metal.”
Surgeon: “Unscrew the old femoral head.”
Yarler: “Wha’????”
Surgeon: “Nice fit. Okay. Stapler…”
Yarler: (lip-and-hip synching) “New head, new muffler, syn-the-tics…”
Surgeon: “A more secure…and silent joint.”
*
In conclusion, my yarler hushed as I lay with gel packs cooling enflamed tissue. From here on in, more and more equilibrium. Less and less yarling.
Muse-infused! Hip revision: balance regained.
*The author wishes to clarify that every hip revision differs. She is now one month post-op, doing rehab exercises, and moving more and more silently.