20 years ago this week, I received my pair of Chromium Cobalt BHR metal hip implants from Dr. Koen de Smet in Ghent, Belgium.

I am so lucky, confident and inspired about my hips that I trained at Ten Kicks gym this week where my daughter fights and coaches…and celebrated my hips with 10 kicks on the heavy bag.

I won’t continue kicking the bag…I want the hips to last at least another 40 years 😊

The three photos include a photo of me bent over pre-surgery on the streets of Ghent, a photo recovering in the hospital using nurse Gilbert’s hip sling and a photo of John Meharg and I leaving the hospital.

My Story

I was sitting at the bar at the Holiday Inn hotel in Ghent, Belgium, drinking Duvel while watching Legends of the Fall on the small TV mounted above the top shelf.

It was midnight.

A traveling Russian salesman, sitting next to me, was teaching me how to say cheers in Russian.
“Na zdarovye!”

He could tell I was in pain. I could barely sit or walk. We toasted for a successful surgery for me.
I needed new hips. My hips were toast from years of athletics and a roofing career where I fell from rooftops a few times.
When I arrived in Ghent a few hours earlier, a city abundant with medieval architecture and castles, the taxi driver who picked me up at the airport saw me walking towards the taxi bent over limping and already knew where I was going before I got in the car.

“Dr. De Smet?” He asked as I struggled to sit in the front seat.
I had put off receiving traditional total hip replacement surgery in the US for years because I was told new total hips would only last 10 years and the only sport I could participate in was golf…and I was 33 years old.
My kids were 1,3 and 5 years old and I dreamed of being able to play with them.

So, I imagined I would run again and postponed surgery for 8 years while waiting for a miracle.
Then one day 8 years later, in October, 2002, an elderly man who had just received hip replacement surgery, told me while I was sitting in the sauna at Gig Harbor Gym and Racquet Club, of new hip implants being used in Europe called BHR’s.
Patients who received the chromium cobalt Birmingham Hip Resurfacing implants, returned to horseback riding, ballet, martial arts etc.

The Holiday Inn I checked into in Ghent was located next door to the University Hospital where Dr. Smet’s hip factory was on the 3rd floor.

I left the bar before Legends of the Fall was over, that movie is super long, then slept at the Holiday Inn my first night. The following morning I checked into University Hospital.

The head nurse was named nurse Gilbert and wasn’t very friendly to me and my hospital mate John Meharg. John, a doctor from San Francisco, was also receiving the same exact bilateral hip replacement surgery as I.
24 hours later the most talented, gifted, efficient hip surgeon in the world had installed me and John’s 4 hips.
I stayed two days post surgery on the 3rd floor of the Hospital then 4 more days in the Holiday Inn which was setup to care for recovering hip patients.

As we recovered in the hospital drinking Trappist beers and pumping morphine into our spines, John nicknamed the head nurse “Count Gilbert.”

I was so inspired by my miracle hips from Dr. De Smet that I took guitar and vocal lessons and wrote a song about the surgery titled Peel Me Apart in 2005.

James Robinson produced Peel Me Apart and the entire Count Gilbert Deadman’s Island album in 2007. Deadman’s Island album art by Lorren – Peel Me Apart lyrics and song in comments