Sketchblog:Â DayBooks
The hips absorb a lifetime of punishment (not always with grace). Or at least it sometimes seems that way. In a way your life is reflected in your hips and in your shoulders, but especially your hips: posture. A combination of configuration and habit, and it’s hard to undo the effects of habit on configuarion. I have a friend who’s been trying to work with arthritis in hip for many years — and the evolution is now bone on bone pain. He’s finally facing double hip replacement: two operations. And then the long process of rehabilitation.
There are no guarantees as far as pain relief goes, but there is every chance that he’ll have increased mobility. Right now he has trouble walking more than a few yards and he’s used to leading an active life. Over the last many years he’s tried the alternatives. to surgery and has faced the surgical option very reluctantly. A tough decision and a tough situation. I hope the surgeries go smoothly and the healing is optimal.
It’s hard to give up the idea of self-care/self-healing. Hard to give up the idea that things-will-get-better. Hard to be brought face to face with what you can bear and what you choose not to.
I posted a drawing here of my friend Art’s partial knee replacement. That procedure was a huge success. Art is back on his bike, chasing after his grandson. I’m hoping Steve will be back roaming the streets of Lower Manhattan within a few months. And I hope, like Art, he gives me access to his x-rays so I can draw the new hips.
I’m perched here at my computer, on my sit bones, keeping track of my hip points, tilting my sacrum, supporting the whole structure with my core, hoping for the best. When I stand up it’ll be “thighs back and apart”.