A Couple Fused at a Needs-to-Be-Replaced Hip

With me flanking protectively, my wife limped gingerly into the elevator in our condo. "Ohmigosh, did you hurt your knee?" asked a neighbor.

"No, it's my hip," my wife said. "To quote my orthopedic surgeon, I've got a 'rotten hip.' I'm in line to get a new one."

The neighbor said her 83-year-old aunt just had a hip replaced and was back to square-dancing, driving, zipping up and down stairs and gardening.

Word of my wife's upcoming surgery spread faster than lice in a second-grade classroom. Over a dozen neighbors related success stories. Everyone seemed to have a friend or relative who emerged better than new -- a stronger, younger, faster incarnation following replacement of an arthritic hip socket with a shiny titanium gizmo, just like on that old TV show "The Six Million Dollar Man."

Even strangers in supermarkets and shopping malls approached and offered stories of surgical success. Each vignette was not merely upbeat; it verged on the miraculous. People with new hips were climbing stairs in a week, driving in two, golfing in three. Regardless of age or infirmity, recovery was complete, quick, pain-free and without complications. So consistently sensational were the reports that I began to consider surgery myself.

Although the anecdotal renderings make hip replacement sound like little more than the annoying bite of a green-headed fly, not everyone soars seamlessly through the procedure to an uncomplicated recovery. As a physician myself, I know the favorable statistics of hip replacement. I also know of frightful complications, which include nightmarish infections and fatal blood clots. Statistics, no matter how comforting on paper, don't diminish the worry factor if it's you or your loved one under the surgeon's saw.

Moreover, the road to relief also can be harrowing. As my wife waited for the scheduled surgery, she grew increasingly resistant to heavy-duty narcotics. Her pain level spiraled. Her mobility shrank to a few square feet in our apartment; pain deprived her of sleep and destroyed her appetite, even for chocolate and ice cream.

Normally uncomplaining and quick to laugh, she looked grim. Day and night merged, and relief appeared only in brief snatches of drug-induced sleep. She struggled to think, to focus, to escape the domination of ceaseless agony. Platitudes and testimonials from well-meaning friends about her bright post-surgical future provided no comfort whatsoever.

"I just may attack the next person who tells me how great I'll feel after the operation," she said.

The wait went on. And on and on. High doses of Percocet and OxyContin, hot packs, cold packs, different positions -- nothing diminished her distress. Even with my medical background, all I could think of was to stay at her side, to massage her aching muscles.

I kept telling myself the time until relief would come was short. Eight days until surgery, seven, six, five. Then an unexpected call.

On the speaker phone I heard her surgeon say he'd canceled the operation because of a dramatic rise in infections in the hospital's orthopedic areas. He said he himself wouldn't have surgery there and he couldn't ask his patients to take the risk.