Time-machine notes on a successful hip resurfacing rehabiliation

[DAC-VAN]

I have posted elsewhere on this website about my successful hip resurfacing by Dr James Pritchett in Seattle, including my post-op recovery, and my enormous gratitude to Dr Pritchett and his team.

Some notes on rehabilitation process: what I would tell myself eight months ago, if I had a time machine.

Background: 53-year-old male, in decent shape with no other health issues, avid marathon and trail ultra-runner.

First advice: lose weight and increase fitness and flexibility before the operation. The combination of osteoarthritis stopping my regular long-distance runs, and an increased consumption of craft beer and unhealthy food to drown my sorrows, caused me put on a few pounds. I should have trained aggressively for the operation, so that my post-op body would not be weighed down with extra pounds, and so that increased flexibility would accelerate my recovery.

I stuck closely and fairly consistently to the recommended rehab process, always following Dr Pritchett's wise advice that "your body will tell you when to stop." In other words, I generally pushed myself, but stopped at the feeling of sharper forms of pain.

Starting about two weeks after the operation, I would do daily walks with the walker up and down the block, and then around the neighbourhood. Then longer and longer walks -- 1km, 2km -- around the neighbourhood. I picked out a route that combined flats, and up and down hills. I walked portions sideways and backwards. At 7 weeks I did my first walk around the neighbourhood with no arm braces: some pain and tiredness, but a great sense of progress.

After three weeks I started on the stationary bike, increasing the time intervals every night.

Resistance training in swimming pools was enormously useful. I was able to exercise in an old-school swimming pool with a constant depth of four feet. Resistance walking, and then running -- straight, and sideways, and backwards --  was very helpful. I wish that I had started water resistance training at an earlier stage of the rehab, and done it on a daily basis.

While I was pretty good in doing daily stretch and strengthening exercises (clamshells with a resistance band, child pose, downward dog, leg lifts, and (later) lunges, etc.), I wish that I had pursued these more consistently and aggressively, at an earlier stage.

I also wish that I had started RMT treatments at an earlier stage, to help break up the scar tissue around the hip socket, and at the top of the thigh. I started at six months; I probably could and should have started closer to two months.

Every few days I lie on a rubber muscle massage ball for a few minutes on the scar tissue at the top front of thigh, and then on the side hip. Hurts a bit a first, but then the muscle relaxes: Again, I wish that I had started to do this earlier.

I also worked on the scar tissue by pushing the rounded edge of a metal mug against the top of the thigh: again, I wish that I had worked on this earlier and more consistently.

For Vancouver (BC)-area patients, I strongly recommend my physiotherapist David Harrington at Lynn Valley Orthopaedic & Sports Physiotherapy Centre and my RMT Geoff Heald at PainPro.