As I sat on the shore watching my old friend and my daughter cavorting on paddleboards in the early morning sun, the North Sea an unusually flat blue millpond of joy, I could not help the envy rising inside and it was not a pretty sight. I wanted to stand up on the paddleboard and glide out in the morning sun alongside them. I longed to walk boldly into the water and feel my people all around me, as I have always done.
Not only was it currently very difficult to go down the beach, dragging my useless hip alongside me with my stick called Barry helping me maneuver the shingle, but I no longer even possessed the courage to go in the water. The sea of my youth, my hometown water was off limits to me this time around. For the first time in my life, it’s a beautiful day, the sea is calling my name, and I am not going in. It was a devastating realization that my life had immeasurably altered for the worse.
When your body is operating in less-than mode, you feel vulnerable, like a patient who has just returned home from the operating theater. You tread cautiously, watching the pavements and the sidewalks for trip hazards. Over the course of a few months, I felt as if I had become very old, much less joyous than my usual and consequently super unattractive to myself and others. In my mind, I was nearing 90 maybe, a walker right around the corner from where I was currently crouched — perhaps a care home in my future. My girlfriend of the same age stood up effortlessly on her paddle board with her dog in front of her and maneuvered herself gracefully out to sea. Green-eyed jealousy ruled my waves.
“Not long now!” everyone chirped. “You are going to be Wonder Woman of the highest order all over again! They’ve made such progress in hip replacements these days, you will be back in the water very soon!” I would smile meekly at these efforts to cheer my journey along, thinking “so great for you to say, you are not the one going under the knife!”
Madame Hospital Administrator calls me in the middle of the night. Three times, in fact. I tell her I’m in England. (Therefore eight hours ahead of her peppy little self.) This does not register. She is mighty concerned that my pre-op is the day before my surgery. I tell her that was not my choice; they rescheduled the original pre-op. She advises the surgery may need to be rescheduled. I tell her the orthopedic crew all knew that I would not be back in the country until the weekend before the surgery. She gave me a headache and set the worries into a place where insomnia breeds at the depths of night. “No, you may not reschedule me!” I tell myself dramatically inside my own head. “I have my mind set on the week after Mother’s Day. I don’t think this amount of adrenalin would be good if it is forced to last for another week or so.” Second or third call was to remind me that I would need to pay the surgeon at the pre-op. Noted to self at 3 a.m. that I needed to check on the required space on the credit card.
Awakening a little blurry after all my late-night conversations, I sit by the sea and have a little talk with the universe. I tell my mum and my sis that I am being a complete brat about my upcoming surgery. I’m the first person in my friends’ group to have this particular operation and I have no gauge about any of it, except hearsay from well-wishers and people who had it done 20 years ago, pretty much the dark days of hip replacement surgery.
I relay to the spirits of my people that I am nervous and out of my depth, literally. It has been 15 years since my last surgery and that did not go so well. Madame Hospital lady of the night before was barking on about me needing narcotics in my hot little hand before surgery, and I know full well that those things make me puke all day and night. I can still recall that nauseous feeling that seemed to last forever.
You can get yourself in a right tizzy if you over-anticipate something like this and focus too much on the details ahead. The truth of the matter — I’m sure what Mum and Rosie both told me as I sat by the sea — is that my current hip is shot, useless, bone on bone. I will have no quality of life without getting a new one, so I had better “buck up my ideas,” as they say in the U.K.
I remember so well when Rosie was in a similar situation, but younger than me, likely all of 45 years young. The docs had advised her not to get the hip replacement because of all the other treatments she was undergoing at the time, but she was determined to get it done and at least return to some kind of meaningful mobility in what remained of her life. Dad reminds me that she did just that and never mentioned her hip again. I get that now.
Pain can take over your days and nights in such an all-consuming way that you barely recognize the person you thought you were. Rosie enjoyed the heck out of her new hip until she could no more, climbing Kilimanjaro springs to mind, also exploring Kenya and other places where she no longer had to tolerate the constant joint pain.
I need to put aside my worries and be more like brave warrior sister Rosie. Get it done and soon, because there’s no other alternative for an improved physical life; also work hard on feeling better than I have the last several months.
Maybe, in time, I will be able to stand up on the paddleboard again in the early morning sun and enjoy the waters of my home. Perhaps, one day, I shall painlessly walk down the beach without Barry by my side and enjoy beachcombing as I always have without envy in my heart. Just get me through the next several days and I’ll be on my way, as they say. Thanks for all the cheering; it really is appreciated.
