20 days in and feeling good!

Andy Carmichael

I’m 72 years old and have been running pretty much injury-free for 36 years. Suddenly in late September 2014 the day after a modest little 3 mile run, I was in bad pain down my right side – groin, thigh and leg. For the next two months, I could still walk as much as I liked, but by mid-December, a CT-Scan showed I was almost bone on bone.

Total hip replacement surgery happened February 10, 2015 and even I’m surprised at my speedy recovery. I’ve been driving and walking for 10 days and return to work this week. My surgeon’s delighted and doesn’t want to see me again until April.

It seems my fast decline – going from walking fairly normally to surgery in less than two months – has helped with my recovery. The muscles didn’t get a chance to atrophy and I was able to transition directly from a walker to walking four days after surgery, which my surgeon says is ‘remarkable’.

The only hiccup? When I returned home, I stopped taking Norco (narcotic) and replaced it with Tramadol. It worked fine until I tried to go cold turkey last Friday. Saturday morning, it felt like I had a bad dose of ‘flu plus what I imagine the DTs feel like. When I checked online, it seems to be a typical reaction. So now, I’m tapering over several days and feeling much better.