Something different: this “Facing the Real World” section was meant primarily to hold posts on matters related to politics and other public current events. This one’s more personal, and I apologize in advance to anyone reading it who might be seeking a wider perspective.
When did it the pain start? I’ve been trying to remember…
Oh, I know when I first decided to deal with it: this past September, at my annual medical checkup. I told the doc that I had this pain which was driving me crazy — it was way the heck up almost in the groin, at the top inside of my thigh. It didn’t feel like a muscle pain, like I’d pulled or strained something. It was sharp — pointed — almost like I was being stabbed there every time I moved a certain way. Tying my right shoe had become very difficult; cutting the toenails on my right foot, all but impossible: it just hurt too much to fold my right ankle over my left thigh.
He started to ask, “Is the pain in the scro—” but I interrupted him.
“No,” I said it’s not [pregnant pause] there.”
(Believe me: that prospect had worried me, too, and probably a lot worse than it worried the doctor — going back at least a few months before this appointment. I read everything I could find on the sources of sharp pains there. But this pain was weird because it wasn’t obviously in an area where there were any, y’know, organs of any kind. It felt like it was at the top inside of my leg, not my torso.)
So he ordered up a couple of X-ray views of the area, and he didn’t even hesitate when he saw them. His terse summary: “Right hip osteoarthritis.”
I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I welcomed the diagnosis (shortly confirmed by others, like an orthopedic specialist) — I knew what it would mean: hip-replacement surgery.
But that was just the point: my hip? For my entire life, whenever someone referred to their or someone else’s hip — when I referred to mine — they weren’t (er, were they?) referring to the inside of a thigh. They meant the outside of a thigh, on up onto the… well, up onto the butt itself. When you described someone as “wide-hipped,” you were talking about an outer diameter, not an inner. Asked to measure your hips, you’d imagine, say, a pair of outside calipers to span the designated area, not inside ones:
So the osteoarthritis, yeah, okay, I could grudgingly accept that part; I’ll be 75 in a few months, and such problems go with the territory, right? Right up there with cataracts, dental adversity, downsized homes, and fixed incomes.
But… my hip???
Anyway, yes: it’s my hip. That mystery location, at the top inside of my thigh? It’s exactly where most patients with hip osteoarthritis feel pain.
Duh.
And so my calendar assures me: I’ll have the hip replaced — barring any surprises — on Friday, March 6. To prepare for it, I’ve met with an orthopedist, two physical therapists, several incredibly competent nursing specialists, and (twice) the surgeon who will actually do the deed. I have (or soon will) a complete array of gear to help during the post-op period: walker, long “grabber”-type things to minimize the need to bend over, a weird sock-putter-onner gizmo which resembles an athletic shin guard with cords attached to the sides, and so on. I’ve got shoes that don’t need tying, and I’ve got moccasins I can just step into, barefoot, when I get out of bed. I’ve got extra-loose yoga pants, and a complete program of physical-therapy routines to be performed every day, without fail…
I am, in short, facing the surgery with an embarrassing amount of privilege.
I’m facing it, too, with an embarrassing level of, well, trepidation born of medical innocence:
I’ve never had a broken bone. I’ve never had surgery. I’ve never had COVID, or rabies or tetanus, or an STD. Childhood stuff: measles, yes; mumps, yes; chicken pox, sure. And yes — in my mid-70s, right? — I’ve had colonoscopies. I once had a cyst removed from my lower back. I’ve had teeth pulled, and I’ve had root canals. Over the course of several years in my 20s and 30s, I had a series of kidney stones (which passed, after much agony but with no surgery, and then never recurred). And yes, I have an array of prescribed medications I take every day (to boost my thyroid readings, lower my cholesterol, etc.)
My principal “health” concern for decades has been my hearing. But I’ve been hearing-impaired for so long that I almost never count it as an “ailment.”
But in general, considering how little attention I pay to my health, I’ve had a weird shortage of medical adventures. Facing a sort of partial amputation-and-repair, in such circumstances, feels… it feels momentous. To admit that embarrasses the bejeezus out of me, given the health issues other people (especially those in my age group) have had to face in their lives. I don’t feel guilty, exactly. But it does shame me — given what all those other folks have faced — to be even a little freaked out about the upcoming surgery…
And then, like I said way back at the beginning: I’ve recently been wondering when this “thing” first made itself known to me…
It went back to before the X-ray which enabled the diagnosis. It went back a few more months, to when I first started to fear — and then researched to calm myself — that the pain might be in one of those organs in my lower torso. It went back to about a year before that, the spring of 2024, when I first saw a physical therapist about my frustration with various aches and pains which had made me suddenly feel old…
…and then I remembered the furnished house we rented for about six months in a nearby town before moving here, more or less for good:
I remembered, specifically, that I’d started lying down in the bed in an odd way. My usual approach to getting into bed, and getting under the covers, was always to flip back the covers and kneel on the bed first, then prop myself up with an arm up by the pillow, and lower myself onto my side. But what I started doing in that temporary house was sitting on the edge of the bed, and then falling down towards the pillow. Why? Because there was this strange pain which suddenly revealed itself every time I raised my right knee… a pain at the top inside of my right thigh…
Looking back on it now, all I can think is, like, Holy cow: I lived in pain for three years before looking into it??? (No wonder I feel old.)
There’s a classic college-dorm-bull-session question: when you say you see something red, say, are you seeing what I call “red”? I’m pretty sure (a) there’s no real way of knowing, and (b) it doesn’t make any difference.
I bring this up now because I wonder about feeling pain. Would someone else, feeling my level of pain, have acted to deal with it sooner? Or would they regard this level of pain as no big deal? The answer’s probably the same: no way to know, and it doesn’t matter anyhow. Neither wimp nor hero; just me.
And so now I’m about as ready as I’ll ever be. Cut, hammer, saw away, and sew me back up, Doc! (Just do it under anesthesia.)
Aside, for those following my fiction…
…especially 23kpc:
It’s now looking like sometime in mid- to late spring before I’ll have the ebook to share with paying subscribers. The psychological distraction of the upcoming surgery and recovery is just too, well, distracting: I’ll need to give the project focused attention for a few weeks, which simply ain’t happening sooner.