Hip Hip Hooray

Sorry, i'm running out of hip puns for these titles.

It's been almost 7 weeks now. I can walk pretty well-- most people would not know that i am still rehabing from surgery. I've done a couple of 15-minute sessions on my road bike trainer without any discomfort. I still have trouble with stairs and i can't really do any motion that puts much torque on my hip, but most signs are encouraging. This is the first time in almost a year that i've been able to walk without a limp.

I finished my outpatient physical therapy this week. I'll still have to do various exercises for the foreseeable future, but it's nice to be past the regular hospital visits. I'm eager to get back to some sort of routine-- maybe at least start doing tai chi in the next few weeks. My biggest frustration at the moment is that there is very little information on what i can or should do once i'm relatively well recovered. Obviously, there are pain and flexibility thresholds that you have to deal with, but information on what's possible otherwise is vague or unavailable. Generally anyone with a normal THR, regardless of the joint type, is warned against "high-impact" activities, but beyond running and basketball the guidance is limited. I gather that most doctors are conservative about post-THR activities, both because they don't really know how the latest generation of technology will last and because most of their patients are so old that they get no objections.

I don't regret the surgery, because whatever limitations i have now are less constrictive than the constant and unavoidable pain i had before. But i do feel a bit like a guinea pig in the sense that i will probably have to constantly experiment with what i can and can't do, and i won't know the consequences until i either do some damage or reach an age where i am necessarily sedentary anyway. Whatever. I guess i was on that path before, finding the barriers and the limits to what i could endure.