A hard life-lesson

It is about this time of year that I traditionally begin my latest annual fitness campaign and earlier this week I opted to visit a physiotherapist in advance for a “look-see” session and perhaps some advice.

I cannot shy away from part of my motivation for this move: both my thirty-something kids have a habit (I’m not suggesting it’s a joint conspiracy) of pointing out to me that I “walk funny” and need to do something about it.

The first thing to register is that I don’t accept I “walk funny” even though my offspring assure me the evidence is there for all to see: to paraphrase their thrust, I “walk like an old man”.

It is the case that I had a right hip replacement in the summer of 2016 and afterwards did not do as well in terms of “getting back to normal within 12 months” as I should, especially after I had scoffed at the medical profession’s prediction that this was how long it would take and had maintained to anyone who would listen that I’d manage it in a quarter of the time.

What occurred was this.

Having gone for my first few sessions of physiotherapy – and taken away a raft of exercises to do at home in the periods between them – I had initially made good progress.

However, I was mentally unprepared for that which I had been warned about, viz. that recovery from serious surgery is not always a straightforward case of automatic linear improvement – the notion that, if you put in the “hard yards”, progress will automatic and constant.

What sometimes happens – as it did to me – is that, after a few weeks of consistent improvement, suddenly the patient can hit a “wall” (a period during which the recovery process slows or even grinds to a halt), at which point – the medical advice is – not to worry but simply keep going with the exercises.

I didn’t manage that. When I hit my metaphorical “wall” – and despite knowing this was not what to do – I allowed myself to become frustrated and then took the attitude that if my exercises weren’t going to jolly well “work”, I couldn’t be bothered to do them properly, or at all.

The inevitable happened.

When the prospect of needing a hip replacement had first arisen the consultant concerned had warned that I should delay having the operation for as long as possible because “hip ops” normally last about 15 years, after which – whilst sometimes they can be repeated – sometimes they cannot.

In my case – having had said advice – I had then endured three and threequarter years of walking with an increasingly limp and general difficulty, eventually going about my everyday business in a constant degree of pain whilst also doing a passable impression of a matelot walking along a heaving deck during a major storm at sea.

It was at that point I decided that I couldn’t stand it anymore and booked myself for my hip op three months hence.

Now – a year on and recovering from said operation but suddenly finding myself no longer making progress – I almost reverted to doing my matelot impression in order to get around.

And thus it was that I ended up taking longer even than the average 12 months everyone else was taking to “get back to normal”.

It was, of course, my own fault entirely.

Fast-forward back to this week’s hour-long trip to my local physio.

She first listened to my tale of events thus far and then asked me to take my socks and shoes off and walk up and down her office; then repeatedly step up onto a plastic ledge she had placed upon the floor, first off one foot and then the other in turn; and finally asked me to take my shirt off and lie on a folding bed whilst she moved each leg into the most awkward of positions to test my flexibility and movement.

Her diagnosis was interesting.

Apparently I have a certain degree of curvature of the spine, which we agreed was probably a result of innumerable hours of sitting in front of a computer screen, but otherwise my (new) right hip and leg were in remarkable shape, with relatively little muscle wastage compared to that which might be expected of someone who’d had a hip replacement and was my age (almost on the cusp of my eighth decade).

Interestingly, my left hip was as much of a concern to her. I’d told her that – when I went back to my surgeon for my “signing off” meeting, as I rose from my chair to depart, he said almost as an aside “Oh, and one more thing, I’m sorry to say you’ll have to have your left hip done at some point …”

My physio this week – responding to my request that I might be given exercises which would eventually allow me to resume jogging, at least on grass – announced that she was not going to do this. All high-impact activities were now permanently out of the question for me, for the good of my (unreplaced) left hip as much as the replaced right one.

All other low-impact activities – e.g. swimming and using a rowing or treadmill machine – were fine, but jogging was definitely “out”. Permanently.

It’s a man’s life, getting old!