Two resurfaced hips

Hi John,

I broke my right femoral hip in a bicycling accident in June 2019. At the time, it was repaired with 3 screws. I was told that I could not run or jump for 3 months, but after that I could do what I wanted.

Recovery seemed to go well for a a while. Unfortunately in my case, the blood flow to the ball of my hip had been disrupted and I developed avascular necrosis. This necessitated a THR in October 2020.

I hope that you have better luck than I did and that you’ll be running in a few months. Fingers crossed for you!

PS: That first sentence should read, “I broke the femoral neck (non-displaced fracture) of my right hip in a bicycling accident in June 2019.” Sorry for my careless editing.

Hi John,

When I had the screws put in, my surgeon told me that it would be 12-18 months before I knew that the surgery was a success and that I had not developed avascular necrosis. My first problems came in November 2019, about 5 months after surgery. I had pain after running. I rested for a month and it went away. Then, in March of this year, I noticed that I was not putting my weight equally on both legs when I was standing, that I was putting most of my weight on my good leg. I didn’t have pain at that time. In April the pain after running came back and got worse. It hurt to climb stairs, it hurt to lift my leg or to turn over in bed, and the pain sometimes woke me up at night. In May I stopped running and started restricting the amount of walking I was doing to try to give my leg a rest. It helped, but not enough to enable me to run. Physical therapy made it worse. An x-ray in August, more than a year after my initial surgery, showed that the ball of my hip had flat spots–I had avascular necrosis. I scheduled THR surgery when I started getting horrible knee pain when I tried to walk more than a small amount; I was literally rationing out trips to the grocery store.

I am 12 weeks post op as of today. I am not trying to run at this time. My hope is to be able to walk 5K this weekend–it’s my New Year’s goal. It has taken me 3 months to work up to this, but it is far more walking than I was able to do for months pre-op. My surgeon has told me that I cannot run any more. I haven’t decided yet what to do about that; my body is not ready to run, so any decision would be premature now. I’ll be evaluating how I feel in another 3 months or so. I take hope from this blog that I might be able to do some running in the future.

I wish you the best of luck with your hip.

–Hoppie.

Hi John,
For me, the most important exercises were to rebuild strength in the side of my thigh where they cut through the muscles and IT band: clamshells, lateral walk, stair climbing, side lunges, and balancing on the operated leg. Your PT should cover this.
-Hoppie