5 Months Post Op

Hoppie

Hello Everyone,

I am now 5 months post op (posterior THR), and have gotten a good bit of my normal life back. I can sit “crisscross applesauce,” sit on my feet, and bend over and touch the ground. My surgeon read wanted some continuing movement restrictions for a year, which made me mad. I haven’t done yoga or any crazy, but other than that I do what I want. I found the 3 month movement restrictions of the posterior approach to be very frustrating, and am envious of those of you with the anterior approach and fewer restrictions. However, I think that this is a good result. My legs are the same length and my biomechanics are the same as before surgery. I have no pain.

This weekend I took a long walk on a local rail trail, maybe 5 miles. This is the longest I have walked since I started having problems with avascular necrosis. Yesterday, I signed up for a virtual Quarter Marathon (6.55 miles). I’ll walk it, not run it, but this is a little piece of my pre-avascular necrosis life that I’m taking back.

I still do not know if I will run again. I am finally getting to a point where strenuous walking does not aggravate the soft tissues around my main incision. It’s a huge 8″ incision, and I still have some swelling. UGH. I imagine that running would aggravate this more. I am frankly afraid of prematurely wearing out the prothesis if I run on it, and after 2 hip surgeries in 2 years the thought of having a revision fills me with dread. At 61 years old, I may have to have a revision anyways, but still it’s a concern.

Any thoughts? How do you deal with worrying about wearing out your implant? Has anyone with posterior surgery been given movement restrictions for a year, or permanent movement restrictions? I have the Stryker Dual Mobility hip which gives greater range of motion, and I chafe at being given restrictions.

-Hoppie

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    • March 15, 2021 at 5:34 pm #19446
      Hoppie
      Participant

      Hello Everyone, I am now 5 months post op (posterior THR), and have gotten a good bit of my normal life back. I can sit “crisscross applesauce,” sit o
      [See the full post at: 5 Months Post Op]

    • March 16, 2021 at 2:21 am #19450
      WedgeC
      Participant

      Hoppie – sorry for your frustrations with movement restrictions… I’ve been told I’ll be slightly delayed with mine though I’m just 3 months post op now. I had posterior approach and have still a decent degree of movement restrictions via pain near my incision; muscular related. I posed your same question to the group about six weeks ago; how do you know if you are doing damage to the “hardware”? I didn’t really get an answer… Other than to carefully monitor pain, strain, and soreness in the hip area. I resumed fairly easy jogging 7 weeks post-op and have run 2 5-K “races” in the last 3 weeks… that’s probably sounds reckless to some but I am really just listening to my body. If I am not having pain and upon x-ray and check in with my orthopedic and PT am not causing problems, I will continue!

    • March 16, 2021 at 5:04 pm #19451
      Hoppie
      Participant

      Interesting. I thought you had the anterior approach because you’re so far ahead of where I was. It took me almost 3 months to be able to walk 5K.

      Towards the end of my 3 months, when I started pushing the envelope a little, I felt tightness when I was trying to move further because of the scar tissue, and because I hadn’t moved in those ways in 3 months!

      What I was told by my PT is that the goal was to get the soft tissues to “scar in” as tightly to the prothesis as possible; therefore I wasn’t supposed to do anything to stretch them. If they scarred in tight, they’d help hold the prothesis in and prevent dislocation. The risk of dislocation is highest in the first few months, but it never entirely disappears.

      I would agree–it it hurts, don’t do it.

      Cheers!

    • March 17, 2021 at 8:45 am #19458
      Petemeads
      Participant

      Hi Hoppie,
      I had to look up the details of the dual mobility prosthetic to see the bearing surfaces and found a paper on the Stryker version examining devices that had been removed during revision ops. Most of the wear seems to be in the small bearing where most of the motion takes place. Stryker seem to think their crosslinked polyethylene wears very well. I know the French are keen on dual-mobility for skiers and climbers and I correspond occasionally with someone who has them bilateral and still works as a mountain guide. Not a runner, though.
      My ceramic/ceramic THR was placed by a lateral incision, a long one like yours, and my surgeon specifically said I could carry on doing all the things I do, running, biking, climbing etc and I would not be able to break it. Pretty reassuring! I was jogging at 6 weeks, racing 5k every Saturday after a couple of months and at nearly 4 years am doing better than ever in age-graded terms having just turned 70. My other hip is metal on metal resurfacing, this will wear but blood tests can detect the metal ions to give some warning.
      Not sure how to advise you to proceed other than to ‘listen to your body’ like all of us will say. Try jogging, see how it goes, be happy with strenuous hiking if it does not suit you. Dislocation is pretty rare nowadays even without the dual bearing.

      Good luck!

    • March 17, 2021 at 4:49 pm #19460
      Hoppie
      Participant

      Thanks, Pete! It’s interesting that you found a paper on dual mobility implants which had been removed; I didn’t find anything like that when I was doing my pre-op research. If you still have that link handy, I’d love to read it.

      I’m doing lots of walking now, about an hour a day. Power walking is up next; I hope that the swelling around the incision has gone down enough to tolerate the addition stress of the power walking.

      Cheers,
      Hoppie

    • March 18, 2021 at 12:44 am #19463
      Petemeads
      Participant

      https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6345163/

      Hi Hoppie – link to the research I mentioned, I struggled to find it again by searching, had to look in history so I am not surprised you didn’t discover it for yourself!

      Cheers, Pete

    • March 18, 2021 at 4:19 pm #19465
      Hoppie
      Participant

      Thank you, Pete! Not only is there a lot of information here, but the links in the footnotes led me to even more good information!

    • March 18, 2021 at 6:38 pm #19467
      Hip Brother Tom
      Keymaster

      Hi Hoppie,

      I don’t worry much about a revision. My quality of life is very important to me, and running is a key contributor to my quality of life. It’s been 9 years since I got my hip replacement and I am still going strong. We are all a big experiment. I hope you find solace and support from us. Don’t ignore the doc, but be sure to question the recommendations and see if there is some wiggle room for you to test the hip by running a little.

    • March 19, 2021 at 2:52 pm #19468
      Hoppie
      Participant

      Thanks, Tom. I am encouraged by the success of folks here to try a little running. Not yet– I’ll wait until the swelling has completely gone down because I think running would aggravate it. But you are so right about quality of life. I don’t like the idea of having running taken away from me if in fact it would be OK for me to do it. So I’ll give it a try when the time is right.
      -Hoppie

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