My Hip Surgery Journey

I have been remiss in updating my blog. There has so much been going on that the blog got over looked. Last spring/ summer about the time the blog got forgot I started suffering some significant mobility issues. In August I was diagnosed with a severely compromised hip (left). No dramatic accident or sport injury as a cause I had just wore it out over years of hard work in construction. It was not possible with my work load to have surgery in the fall and be tuned up enough to work the trapline and video the TV show all winter. Looking at my calendar I decided March was my target month for a new hip. I had to make the winter first and to that end on November 22 I had my hip injected with cortisone. That was a pretty cool procedure with the flexible needle inserted into the hip through live x-ray. I got to watch it all and that was neat. For 2 days I was 45 again! But only 2 days and then the pain started returning. In order to have surgery it had to be 3 months since my last injection. 3 months put me at Feb 22 so I did the winter on Tylenol. I'm not going to say it was easy or that I didn't have other options but things like opiates and hydrocodone have never been an option in my life. I got there the way I've made it through most of life on will power and sheer stubbornness. I became a shark. Sleep was brief and strangely movement eased the pain. The recliner in the living room and a second in the trapline cabin became my beds. I'd get 3 sometimes 4 hours of sleep and then have to get up and pace. I never got to sleep in my own bed for months.

At the end of February I pulled all the last of the otter traps and turned my focus to my health.

The picture was taken in the moonlight at the cabin!