I'm Back! Kind of. Maybe.

After a six-month absence, I seem to have broken the cardinal rule of blogging, which is to post on a regular basis. I also broke the second cardinal rule of blogging, which is don't start a blog about your semi-detached ass, but I think I get a free pass on that one.

So, after 224 posts spanning several hundred pages and nearly 2 years, why did I suddenly go AWOL? Was it because my hip magically healed itself, my gluteus medius grew back and there was nothing more to write about? Nope. Was it because I got tired of making jokes involving puns on the word 'half-assed?" Unlikely. That shit never gets old.

In truth, there were several reasons, but the main one was that I just got busy. Right now, I have 3 jobs, 2 volunteer positions, a book coming out in the Fall and a cat who sits on my chest and slaps me in the face when I'm sleeping if I don't pay enough attention to her (true story). Plus, now that I'm living in Vancouver, land of "Would You Like Some Sky-High Rental Prices To Go With Your Seasonal Affective Disorder-Inducing Climate?", a girl's got to hustle to make ends meet.

Honestly, I was also getting tired of talking about my hip replacement. After two surgeries, months of rehab, and countless people approaching me on the street to ask what's, like, wrong with me, I wanted to get off the Arthroplasty Express and spend a little time in Normal-28-Year-Old-Chick-Doing-Normal-Shit-Town. (Okay, yes, I know. 'Arley' and 'normal' go together as well as 'Vancouver' and 'sunny days.' But still!) I was beginning to get known as That Girl Who Had A Disastrous Hip Replacement instead of That Girl Will Publish Her Second Book By 28 or That Girl Who Looks Totally Awesome And I Wonder If She's Single.

It all reached a boiling point when a guy I used to play wheelchair basketball with was like, "Arley's so obsessed with her hip. She doesn't talk about anything but her hip. She wants to have sex with her hip." I kind of freaked out and vowed to stop blogging that night. Working in wheelchair sports and having played them for most of my life, you get to know a lot of people with disabilities. 95% of those people are well-adjusted and generally awesome -- or well-adjusted but kind of douchy, it varies -- but there's a small percentage who seem to see themselves as A Disabled Person, as if that's the only thing about them. I didn't want to ever become the kind of person who devotes the bulk of their Facebook status updates to being like, "OMG! It is so hard being disabled! Recently, someone said something that could possibly have been perceived as discriminatory and I am going to freak the fuck out and go on an exclamation-point-fueled rant about how people are so ignorant and it's a good thing I'm so strong and brave and can overcome the weight of society pressing down upon me! P.S. I just got pink butterfly stickers for my wheelchair and they are totally rad." It's a problem whenever you can boil your identity down to a single phrase, whether it's 'disabled' or 'cat enthusiast' or 'a warlock with tiger blood and Adonis DNA' (#winning), and I didn't want anyone thinking of me as someone who's obsessed with her disability.

Also, not going to lie, it's a little disconcerting to be like, "Good news! My blog gets over 5,000 visitors a month. Wait, bad news! 86% of those visitors are just here for the 'sexual healing' post I did on post-surgical sex positions, which means that there are a lot of sick fuckers out there jacking off to cartoons of old people getting it on to the point of hip dislocation." (Side note to whoever Googled "Arley McNeney naked" and/or "Arley McNeney boobs": If you need the help of Google to locate my boobs, you are probably never going to see them in real life. And by 'probably' I mean 'absolutely.' And by 'absolutely' I mean 'Seriously. Really. Eww.') Bottom line: if I'm going to be helping some guy get off, I want to at least be enjoying myself in the process.

So those are the reasons why I left, but here are the reasons why I'm back. (Maybe. Hopefully. Depending on how the whole 'having 8 million jobs and trying to have a social life' thing pans out). First, my mom has been on my case about it forever. (Hi mom! Love you!). Second, however, my friend J.T. (no, not Justin Timberlake, though he and I are pretty close) is having a hip replacement tomorrow and we actually have the same surgeon. Don't worry, it's not the guy who did the first surgery!

One of the cool things about "Young and Hip" has been hearing from people all over the world who are thinking of having a hip replacement or have already had one or who are supposed to have one but now I've terrified them and they'd rather drag their arthritis-stricken hips through hot lava than go through with the surgery and wind up like me. (To the latter group, I have this to say: Despite everything that happened, I wish I'd had the hip replacement years ago. If I'd had my surgery on a different day or with a different doctor, you would never have heard about me because I'd be off living my life thinking, 'Hey, remember that mildly-to-moderately painful time in my life when I got a hip replacement? That was so worth it for all the awesome shit I'm doing now.')

Anyhow, while I've heard from tons of different hip replacement patients, I've never known anyone in real life who's my age and about to go through one. And considering all that J.T. has been through to get the surgery, I thought I'd give her a little shout out to wish her luck. So, good luck J.T.! Here's hoping that you recover quickly and are soon back to living the dream. Hip precautions may be annoying, but three months is a short period of time and soon you can throw away your ass cushion and post-hip-replacement sex manual and enjoy life as a pain-free bad-ass cyborg. Keep me posted!

What to Expect When You're Expecting to Become a Cyborg: The Hip Replacement!

When I started this blog nearly a year ago, my original intention was to write about my own hip-replacement experience so that people going through the same thing would hear something more than the "OMG, it's going to be the best experience ever! It's the surgery version of Disneyland! You will be skipping around in fields of wild flowers while lute music sweetly serenades you in no time!" you get from most people in the hip-replacement world. (Yeah, I might pretend to be the Mother Theresa of the Arthroplasty, but everyone knows my real motivation was fame and fortune. Google AdSense, you owe me $20.18!)

I may not be able to offer any useful tips (beyond "try not to have your ass fall off"), but I sure can provide a travelogue of the hip-replacement wilderness for future travelers. I'm like the Lonely Planet Guide, but instead of telling you about what hostels are less likely to give you fleas, I'm telling you about how it feels to be awake while someone takes a power saw to your midsection. If you're squeamish, you might want to move along to the next post while dreaming of fluffy kittens.

On the day of the surgery, I got up at 4:30 a.m. so that I could have a shower. You might be thinking, "Why not get up at 5 a.m. and skip the shower?" Quick answer: Because I knew that my next shower would be three or four days later when I would be dizzy, covered in pink antiseptic wash and sitting on a shower chair swearing a blue streak because a) I dropped my washcloth and there is literally no way to pick it up without breaking hip precautions b) every time I look down I see the 30-something staples along the side of my leg and c) I have to juggle a hand-held shower that is twisting in my hand like a cobra and spraying water all over my towel. (Okay, that wasn't a quick answer).

After you check in to the hospital, you go to a pre-op holding pen where you are visited by a never-ending stream of medical professionals. It's like being Scrooge in "A Nightmare Before Christmas" but with fewer figgy puddings and more needles. For some reason, most of these medical professionals turned out to be young, attractive males. At first, I was like "screw Plenty of Fish! Bring on Plenty of Interns With Incredible Earning Potential! Let's hope that sleep deprivation has the same effect as beer goggles!"

Alas, it ended up like the most disappointing romance novel ever. Instead of having the hot young intern give me his phone number, he signed his initials in felt pen on my upper thigh so that the surgical team wouldn't slice up the wrong leg. (It's actually still there). When I originally met the hot anesthesiologist intern, I was like, "Damn, you can slide your epidural needle into my joint space any time." After the 5 attempts it took him to get my IV in, however, I had to amend that to "no...seriously...any time now....whenever you're ready."

After an hour of that, it was finally go time. I was wheeled into the OR room and transferred on to the table to get my epidural. I mentioned in a previous post that it took two epidural injections, probably about 8 or 9 attempts, and over a dozen local anesthetic doses to get me frozen. Seriously, if I heard the phrase "you'll just feel a little poke here...." one more time I was going to give them a little poke with my fist in their face. Now, I had a terrible case of mono a few years back and the result is that when I get tired, dehyrated, hungry or...I don't know....all of the above while being jabbed with needles over and over again, I tend to faint. Long story short: I keeled over like one of those goats that George Clooney stares at. They had to finish the epidural with me laying on my side.

This time, they did the hip replacement through the back way, which unfortunately means that I cannot look at my proper, gentlemanly, pink-polo-shirt-wearing surgeon without hearing Howlin Wolf's "Backdoor Man." So that I could assume the back-door position, (I'm not being dirty! That's what they call it!) they set up some vises, laid me on my side, and clamped me on to the table as if I was a 2 X 8 on a sawhorse. The powertools laid out by me did little to detract from the effect. It was a little like being part of some "saw the woman in half" magic trick, since people kept draping me with fabric and, you know, actually sawing through my bones.

To sedate me, they gave me a little sip of the Michael Jackson cocktail, Propofol, so for most of the surgery I was in and out of consciousness. I could feel twisting and hammering and sawing and pulling, but was drugged up enough to feel that the most appropriate response would be to have a conversation with Hot Anesthesiologist Intern. Lord knows what we talked about. I shudder to think. (Maybe this is what I need to talk to guys....surgical-grade sedatives). My final memory of the surgery: seeing one of the assistant surgeons with his face shield sprayed with drops of my blood informing me that they were just stitching me up.

After that, it's on to the recovery room. Because of the problems with the epidural, I was frozen for much longer than expected, which means that I spent four hours listening to an endless parade of morphine-addled old people, one of whom would not stop noting aloud how sorry she felt for a nurse who was a recent single mother, how very, very sorry she was, how unfortunate it was that some poor children were growing up without a father. It also meant that they had to put a catheter in which, even though I was partially frozen, still wasn't the most fun thing to ever happen to my lady business. (Those of you asking what exactly would be the most fun that ever happened to my lady business need to check yourself). Yes, having a hip replacement definitely means checking your dignity at the door.

And on that sexy note, I'm going to go back to sleep. Yup, still blogging with a little help from Vitamin D...and I'm not talking about the kind you get from sunshine.

Arley 3.0: Now With More Morphine

It's 5 days after surgery and this post is brought to you by the letter D for Dilauded AKA Hydromorphone AKA "Surgery? What surgery? Why am I dreaming of cartoon hamsters?" Yes, after my second hip replacement I am "keeping comfortable" on the same drug that's keeping Lindsey Lohan "comfortable" while she's chilling in jail. The only difference is that she got it for a minor dental procedure and I had to stay another night in the hospital because of the difficulties of getting a prescription for it, even though someone took power tools to my hip's joint space. Man, celebrity has its perks. (On that note, how does Lindsey Lohan get counted as a celebrity? Who is jail is thinking, "Well, I know she hijacked a car and drove three terrified passengers on a coke-fueled police chase...but she did gift the world with the cinematic brilliance that was "The Parent Trap," so let's call it a wash. Feel free to load up on sketchy, easily abused prescription meds before you do your time, darling!")

I was hoping to blog more recently after the surgery, but unfortunately there was no wireless internet in the hospital and I'm pretty sure that for the first few days, my blog posts would resemble the rants you hear on Hastings and Main in Vancouver. That means that I've got a lot of ground to cover. I'm going to break it down into smaller posts over the next few days, mostly since the letters are already kind of swimming on the page and my nap-per-paragraph ratio is roughly 1:1.

So....Arley Version 3.0 Coles Notes Edition. The biggest headline is that it didn't go exactly as expected: They didn't attach the gluteus medius because there was too much scar tissue. They did, however, replace the socket and ball. And they went in through the back door (that's what she said) so the whole thing should be much more stable. After the surgery, Dr. SecondOpinion told me that the result "won't be one of those hip replacements where the person walks well." (Oh, you wanted one of those? You should have specified!) So far, however, the results feel a million times better than the first time around. My hip's not clunking around the way it was before and I'm walking pretty well considering that everything in the area is still like, "Dude, WTF?"

I will blog more about the surgery when every sentence I write isn't being co-authored by a morphine derivative, but here are some teasers:

• Want to know what phrase you don't want to hear coming from a guy who's about to jam a big-ass needle into your spine? "Because I'm just learning, I'll be supervised by Dr. SoAndSo Here." And coming in a close second: "You're going to feel a poke....another poke....and another poke....Darn." (Perhaps the reason why it was so hard for me to get a Dilauded prescription is because of the track mark situation on my arms and back).
  
• Want to know a phrase that you should never have to say after receiving a spinal epidural? "Um....so.....am I supposed to, like, feel numb yet?"
  
• For the first few days, I dreamed of exploding cartoon hamsters, which struck me as such a stereotypical Oxycontin-fueled dream that I would amuse myself and wake up. You know you've spent too much time in academia when you are woken up by irony.
• Day 1: I felt freaking fantastic. Little pain, no nausea. I was the Queen of Surgery, the Princess of the Post-Op, I was mentally reinacting that "king of the world' scene in Titanic. I was like, "Wait...you mean....something might actually go....right?"
  
• Day 2: Let's just say there was more puking than a bulimic convention in an ice-cream shop.
• Let's also say that I will never again eat pea soup with noodles. And that for days after I was still finding specks of dried neon-green bile on my hospital bed...my desk lamp....my bedside table..... (Too much information? Too much information).
  
• The first day, my roommate was a guy who had broken both of his heels after his girlfriend threw $1800 of his money in $100 bills out the window and he jumped out the second-story window after it. (Suddenly, being single doesn't seem so bad).
• For the rest of the stay, my roommate was an elderly Asian man who talked in his sleep in a mixture of Chinese and English, resulting in such gems as "You need 30% more birth control!'
• I woke up this morning to my cat snuggling under my chin purring and sleepily licking my chin and was almost deliriously happy. Well, okay, the delirious part was probably the morphine, but still. Ah, cats: They love you and they never drop $1800 of your cash money out the window.

Okay, I'm off to drift into a drug-fueled slumber. Post more soon!

Arley Version 3.0

Well, tomorrow's the big day: My Freaky Cyborg Hip gets it hardware upgrade to V. 3.0 and I get to star in a remake of "Dude, Where's My Dignity?" (Actually, depending on what drugs they give me, it actually might be more like "Dude, Why Are There Small People Sitting on My Feet Singing 'Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man?'") IMPORTANT NOTE TO SELF: Do not update your work Facebook page while whacked out of your tree on painkillers. If only there was a way to lock your Facebook account so you have to take a skill-testing question to post a status update like there is with Gmail. Oh well.

As per usual, I've been overestimating my readiness for the surgery. Last time around, I was diligent: my walker, cushion, sock aid, shoehorn and elastic-laced shoes were lined up like little soldiers ready for battle. My rooms were de-cluttered with a post-hip-replacement body in mind. My bags were packed according to the hospital-approved checklist. I had read the "What to Expect When You're Becoming a Cyborg" (AKA the hip-replacement preparedness manual) back to front. I was like, "Dude, bring it on. I've got this."

This time around: It's 9:30 pm, I have to get up at 4:30 a.m., I have yet to pack anything, my post-hip-replacement bolster is covered in dust, there are piles of clothes strewn all over my room in a manner reminiscent of the $5 sale at Old Navy and I'm really more interested in downloading the "Angry Birds" game for my new Iphone. Yes, I am officially a card-carrying member of the Hipster Society. Good thing I can't wear skinny jeans for another 6 or 8 weeks due to post-surgical swelling, because you could write me off.

In the dreams I've been having about this surgery, I watch the operation while floating above as the events happen in fast-forward while the song "Grounded" by Pavement plays. Yes, even my subconscious is a hipster.



Oh well. Wish me luck. I check in at 6 a.m., my surgery will be around 7 or 8 a.m. and beyond that...Lord knows. Considering that the surgery plan is "open me up and see what's in there and hopefully put my ass back on," what kind of surgery I'll end up getting is really anyone's guess. Either way, Arley Version 2.0 will be a thing of the past and it's time for Arley 3.0: Now with Reattached Ass. And hopefully lasers.

Hopefully, the next time you hear from me, I'll be new and improved and only slightly spelling like a crack-addicted LOLCat. I'll try to update as soon as possible. Too bad I don't have a Twitter account because morphine tweets (Tweaks?) might be really awesome.

Invisible Cartoon Old People Porn....YES!

As expected, the move back to Vancouver was rough (emotional Arley + emotional cat + wheelchair + heavy bag + leaving forever + impending surgery and months of recovery + tons of stuff to do for work + sleep deprivation + did I mention leaving forever? is not exactly a recipe for awesomeness), but we made it here in one piece. I could spend roughly 12,400 words rehashing my complex feelings on leaving, how much I'm going to miss everyone, and how heartbroken I am every time I see poor Mika curled up on A.'s shirt at the corner of my bed, nuzzling it as if she could make A. reappear by doing so, then laying down on it with her head between her paws with a look of pure feline longing. Cat heartbreak is the very worst heartbreak of all!


But let's leave the emo-ness to the cat because we have more important topics to discuss....Invisible Cartoon Old People Hip Replacement Porn!

The day after I got back from Illinois, I went to the OASIS hip/knee-replacement orientation session. In truth, I tried to weasel my way out of it on account of the fact that I am perhaps a little too well oriented in what to expect following a hip replacement. If anything, I would like to become less oriented so that the mere sight of that stupid "sock aid" sitting on a chair in my room ready to aid me in spending 15 minutes just to put on a single freaking sock doesn't give me PTSD flashbacks. I decided to go, however, for two reasons: 1) the lady on the phone insisted in a very firm voice that it was mandatory and I am nothing if not compliant and 2) the last time I did the OASIS program, some chick fainted and I like being around people whose coping skills are worse than my own.

I will spare you a rehashing of the OASIS session. Suffice to say that it is like kindergarten class for people who are getting their limbs sawed off and reassembled. Some nice lady with a calm, gentle, day-care-y voice teaches you to how to avoid post-surgical constipation and demonstrates the best way to inject your stomach fat with bloodthinners to avoid bruising. Just when I was thinking that the day was going to be a waste of time, however, I spied a thick booklet on a pamphlet rack by the OASIS lady's shoulder: Sex After Total Joint Replacement. Let the real lessons begin!

The first time around, all I got was a one-page handout discreetly tucked into a folder of other hip-replacement info. This time, however, they've pulled out all the stops. For starters, the manual stars an elderly couple who resemble the neighbor couple from Dennis the Menace...and let's just say that in this booklet, Martha's doing a lot more than needlepoint.




On one hand, I can understand the thought process behind the cartoon old people. After all, you don't want Doris Q. Hip-Replacement-Patient to be stuck in her fanciest flannel teddy staring at the handout thinking, "Well, damn. In the diagram, your breasts are supposed to be right here, but mine are down by my bellybutton....It's so confusing! I just can't make it all line up!" On the other hand, however, I'm not sure why they felt the need to include images such as this one:


Yes, ladies and gentlemen. That is a cartoon rendering of an old man counting the days until his lady love's post-surgical bruising has gone down to the point that he can rock her compression socks off.

Or this one, which I'm pretty sure depicts the same old guy waiting for his Viagra to kick in while the pamphlet warns about the post-surgical risk of...um....an arid climate in the lady garden:

Why does he look so downcast and alone? Is it because the clock on his chest is counting down the seconds until his sex-induced heart attack? Or maybe it's causing him to reminisce about the time he spent touring with Flava Flav? Who knows? Someone get this guy a Werther's Original because he needs to cheer the hell up. I mean, he's about to get some serious action. Perk up, buddy!

Of course, what would a post-hip-replacement sex manual be if elderly cartoon people didn't demonstrate the acceptable positions? I love some of the graphic-design choices that were made here. Eyes: no. Mouth: no. Perfect 1950s-old-lady updo: MANDATORY. Pearl earrings: ALSO MANDATORY. (Those of you about to make a 'pearl necklace' joke need to check yourselves). And if you ever want to know what exactly your beloved Gran-Gran and Pop-Pop were doing on that rocking chair you used to love as a child...the one with the hand-crocheted afghan....



I especially love the positioning of the artificial hip in this last position. It seems to say, "Oh, God, Walter. Take me with your four inches of medical-grade cobalt chrome! Don't stop!" (Too much? Too much).

But wait! Don't leave to go wash your eyeballs out with acid! It gets better. Do you want to know what this is? Do you want to take a guess?
If you guessed "an image of someone's Granny calling the doctor after she has f*cked her husband's hip right out of its socket," then give yourself a hand! Clearly, someone got a little in to the old cowgirl rocking-chair routine and is going to have a great story to tell to the Bridge Club. Apparently when you put a little Crown Royal in her Ensure meal supplements, she goes wild! You git it, girl!

But..see...here's the problem. I am single. It's bad enough that for ages post-surgery I'm going to have to greet potential suitors with the phrase, "It's nice to meet you. Let me put down this walker so that I can shake your hand." And I'm pretty sure that any sex that requires you to cross-reference your positions with any type of manual is not the kind of sex I want to have. But even if I did want to give some lucky gentleman this booklet as a little homework assignment, what do you think the reaction's going to be? "Thanks for this reading material, darling. I was worried about how to accommodate your post-surgical needs, but now that I mentally associate you with eye-less cartoon old people, I am suddenly overcome with wild feelings of lust! You can consider me officially in the throes of desire!"

Okay, OASIS program. Thanks a lot. You can consider me officially oriented. So oriented that I'm about to buy a few more cats and a pint of Haagen Daaz and call it a day.

The Theory of One Less Gross Thing

It's less than a month until my new surgery date and I'm trying to get mentally prepared for it. Granted, it will be nice to no longer have the surgery hanging over my head, so that I can get on with my life. I've been avoiding dating because I don't want to have to end some hot date by saying, "We'll have to do it again sometime soon....like next week, when I'll be using a walker and will be whacked out of my tree on morphine. Oh, and just FYI, here's a handout of acceptable post-surgical sex positions in case you make it to the third date." Yes, it's time to get the "walking properly" show on the road.

Still, I suspect that this time around will be harder than the last. Last time, I was relentlessly optimistic. I'd done my homework on the surgeon. I'd done a significant pre-hab routine to build up the muscles around my hip. I was young, I was fit, and visions of strutting around the hospital showing off my impressive recovery to the other elderly patients were dancing in my head. Even though it all went off the rails, I was able to power through it mentally by adopting the Theory of One Less Gross Thing. (Okay, I know that technically it should be One Fewer Gross Thing, but it doesn't quite have the same ring to it).

The Theory of One Less Gross Thing rests on the premise that the surgery is a one-shot deal and that every gross, humiliating, painful or unpleasant thing that occurs does so for the last time ever. When I was puking up fluorescent-green bile, I wasn't thinking, "Damn, this sucks," but "This is the last time I ever have to do this. This is one less gross thing I have to go through." When I was getting my staples torn out of my incision perhaps a few days too early by an 80-year-old doctor with shaky hands, I wasn't thinking, "Hot damn, remind me to apologize to all the stapled sheets of paper I have unwittingly violated over the years," but "This is the last time I ever have to do this. This is one less gross thing I have to go through." Shuffling along with a walker; trying to use a long-handled sponge probably created to bathe elephants to scrub the pink antiseptic wash off my toes; injecting my stomach with bloodthinners in a drug-induced haze: all of these were one less gross thing I had to go through, one less gross thing that was standing between me and my sexy new walk.

Well, of course it didn't work out that way and now I'm gearing up for the hip-replacement sequel. Like most sequels, this hip replacement promises to suck more than the first. Part of the reason is that the Theory of One Less Gross Thing no longer applies. I'll be going through everything again and, worse still, I know exactly how gross it will be. Actually, considering that I don't know whether I'll be weightbearing or not, if I'll be following hip restrictions or not, or whether the additional gluteus-medius reattachment will make it more painful than the last time, I could be up for even grosser Gross Things.

Oh well. I aim to make the most of my three weeks of freedom. I've been swimming, walking at least a mile a day, doing the elliptical machine, and doing little weight-training circuits with ab workouts. If I can't be optimistic, at least I'll be fit.

It's the Final Countdown...No, Just Kidding, Psyche!

For the past few months, I've been preparing to move back to Vancouver. (Well, okay, preparing mentally, since I haven't really done the whole "packing" thing yet, even though my dad comes to get my car tomorrow). I had wrapped my mind around the fact that I would leave Champaign on June 14th, then have surgery on June 24th. You know how advent calendars give you a little chocolate every day until Christmas? Well, I had a little surgery advent calendar in my mind, except instead of getting chocolate, all I got was iron pills and an overwhelming sense of dread.

This morning, however, my world was rocked when I received a phone call from my surgeon's office letting me know that my surgery has been bumped to July 28th. It was like opening that last day of your advent calendar expecting a huge-ass chocolate Santa and instead finding a little piece of paper that said, "Christmas has been moved to January 27th. In lieu of chocolate Santa, please accept another month of anticipation and mall Christmas carols." Wrong and unnatural!

On one hand, I was disappointed. Leaving Champaign has actually been really hard for me, but I've had my goodbye party, said farewell to most of my friends, and reconciled myself to ripping off that big bandaid known as "the last four years of my life." I've spent weeks full of emo-ness mentally reenacting that scene from Thorton Wilder's "Our Town" where the chick is a ghost and is lamenting all the things she'll miss about earth ("Goodbye world! Goodbye to clocks ticking and my butternut tree...and Mama's sunflowers...food and coffee...and new-ironed dresses and hot baths..." ), except instead of clocks ticking and butternut trees, it was more like cheap bourbon, barbeque, $250 rent and fireflies. (I freaking love fireflies. They don't have them in Vancouver). I was mentally prepared to leave and I wanted to get the ass-reattachment show on the road.

On the other hand, however, I recognized an opportunity to cling harder to America. Even though my bags were packed, my apartment was sublet (subletted?), my dad was flying down to get my car and my cat had her own little kitty airplane ticket, I didn't have to leave. I could go up to Canada for a week for pre-op appointments and work-related stuff, (I'm off to Montreal soon for a tournament), then come back down for a whole month of rekindling my turbulent romance with the old U. S. of A. America and I could have one of those relationships where it's like "Oh, darling, I know we broke up because you cheated on me with my sister, but let's get back together because I'm lonely and have daddy issues, even though we both know that this will end badly. Turbulent relationships give my humdrum existence meaning!" You know, those people for whom the Facebook status "it's complicated" was invented.

Some might say, "But Arley. Aren't you just prolonging the inevitable? Why don't you just get it over with, move back to Vancouver and begin the chapter of your life entitled 'The Part Where Arley Goes to Concerts By Herself and Tries to Appear Both Receptive to New Friendships And Repellent to Drug Dealers/ Fetishists/ Men Who Believe "So, What's Wrong With You?" is an Acceptable Pick-Up Line'' Wouldn't that be the mature thing to do?" To you, I say: hells no. I have spent at least six months of the past year in bed (or at physio, being out-run by 95-year-olds, which is worse) and I am about to spend another god-knows-how-long doing roughly the same thing. I'm in a "months of bedrest" sandwich and I fully intend to make the filling of that sandwich be as exciting, entertaining and meaningful as possible. And if that means traveling back to Champaign for an extra month of seeing the people I care about...well....so be it.

Yes, it looks like I'm going to have to rebook my ticket on the Struggletown Express. The new plan is that I'm leaving Mika with A., going back to Canada for a week or so, (which will involve a trip to Montreal), then returning to Champaign for a month of couch-surfing, BBQ-eating, and hearing the phrase "hey, didn't you leave here a while ago?" from random people on the street. Because, hey, if my life wasn't relentlessly complicated, I wouldn't have anything to blog about.

It's the Final Countdown

Things have been a little quiet over here in Young and Hip-land. Part of the reason for this radio silence is that I'm working full-time while doing an internship while traveling for work while trying to write another novel while attempting to have one of those so-called "social lives" I've heard so much about while trying to give the cat the amount of attention she requires so that she will not destroy my shit while trying to coordinate my move back to Vancouver while....while..... drinking a lot of coffee. A lot of coffee.

The other reason, however, is that there's been very little to write about. All of the changes in my hip have been incremental and I wasn't about to subject anyone to a post on my newfound ability to lift my leg a fraction of an inch higher than I could before thus enabling me to wash my left foot for the first time in months. (Though I did privately celebrate this milestone). I'm still walking like a drunken extra in "Night of the Living Dead." Rolling over in my sleep on to the place where my gluteus medius is detached still hurts enough to make me dream that someone has sliced my hip open and I'm staggering around bleeding and being like 'damn, I should get me to a hospital.' My hip still clunks and shifts to a degree that often makes me cry out in surprise, (not in pain, really, just surprise), which I'm pretty sure has led people to believe that I have Tourette's Syndrome.

Today, however, I have news the report. I finally got my surgery date. On June 24th, I will go back under the knife to get my ass put back on, my leg length raised and possibly get a brand spankin' new socket. This means that I've got about 6 or 7 weeks left to live in America. This is good news on the "getting my ass put back on" front, but you don't need a weatherman to know that there's a weather system called Hurricane Getting-Deported-And-Operated-On-In-The-Same-Week on the horizon. You know what's not a great way to get your new life off on the right foot? Spending the first few months of it in bed eating frozen grapes and rubbing BioOil on your various scars. (That's also probably a bad way to start a E-Harmony profile. Note to self).

It's interesting to note the weird cyclical-ness (that's not a word) of this surgery. My first hip replacement was on June 23rd 2009. My second surgery will be on June 24th, 2010. Here's hoping this will be the last deja vu I'll experience, since I swear to God that if I wake up from this surgery saying, "Hey, shouldn't I be able to move this leg?" I will literally start shanking bitches with my IV needle.

Don't Call Us, We'll Call You...In a Few Months

You know what baffles me about the medical world? Timelines. Case in point: when I last saw Dr. SecondOpinion, his secretary said she would phone me around January 4th when the office opened after Christmas break to give me my surgery date. Now, when I hear "I will call you on January 4th," I think, "Someone will call me on January 4th or shortly thereafter." (Crazy, I know). When I called today (January 5th), however, the receptionist was super surprised that I called and actually laughed and said, "Oh, we won't get the surgery date for months yet, but it won't be sooner than June." If you won't get the surgery date for months, then why not say to me, "We won't get the surgery date for a month yet so I'll call you around February?" Why say January 4th? If I know I won't get the surgery date until February, then I won't start pestering the receptionist until February. I am nothing if not obedient.

Oh well. His secretary is super nice and actually phones back, so I can't really be pissed at her. Besides, all this would be a minor thing if I lived in Vancouver. The only reason it's annoying is because I'm trying to coordinate living in two places at once. Part of me is beginning to think that my decision to live in Champaign this year was a mistake and that I should have just ripped the proverbial bandaid off, sucked it up, and moved back to Vancouver. I could have been working and cuddling with my cat in a cute apartment as we speak.

Oh well. A. always tells me not to "write revisionist history" and in fairness, there was no way to predict that 7 months after the surgery, I would be still be walking like the poison-apple-giving wicked-witch old crone from "Snow White." And, on the surface, staying in Champaign another year seemed like the perfect solution: time to write in a place that's cheap to live, a way to avoid paying too much for a Vancouver apartment since everyone's holding off listing their apartments until after the Olympics so there's no inventory, a chance to keep searching for American jobs to keep my options open and not rush in to some job that I hate out of panic.

Oh well. The good news is that I have a general timeline. After my neurologist appointment on the 20th, I'll head back to Champaign until my surgery in June. Maybe I'll get a June 23rd surgery date and have my new surgery exactly to the day of my old surgery. That would be a perfect, may-the-circle-be-unbroken kind of thing. It's the circle of liiiiiife, and it moves us aaaaallllll.....Till we find our plaaaaaaace....On the path unwinding.....

"This sure here is a lot of shit happening"

A few minutes ago, I picked up the phone to hear someone say, "This sure here is a lot of shit happening." It was some carpet-cleaning guy calling, unaware that he'd already dialed my number and that I had answered, but it kind of encapsulated my day. Today, I went to see Dr. SecondOpinion. I was hoping that I would get an early Christmas gift in the form of, "No, you don't need surgery! A steady diet of jujubes and gingerbread will clear the problem right up!," but no such luck. Alas, it looks like I found myself once again on Santa's Naughty List because I just got handed a big old lump of coal in the form of medical news. Not the worst news, mind you, but not exactly what I was hoping for.

But first, the good news: Dr. SecondOpinion and his staff/interns enjoyed the X-ray Christmas cookies. His secretary was very impressed and if I've learned one thing from grad school, it's that secretaries secretly run the show and you should do everything possible to stay on their good side. Dr. SecondOpinion's response was particularly priceless: "Those cookies are really...imaginative," which made me laugh a little on the inside because it's exactly what you say to two-year-olds who show you their scribble drawing: "Oh, honey, that's a nice pony you drew...I mean, airplane. Yes, it's a very nice airplane. You're very imaginative." Anyhow, yes, if Dr. SecondOpinion thought I was smoking crack to have given him such a strange Christmas gift, he didn't show it. He even ate one.

My Freaky Cyborg Hip, however, refused to share in the Christmas joy. Since I don't want to rain on your holiday parade, I will keep it brief (okay...brief-ish): it's apparently really hard to re-attach the gluteus medius muscle and Dr. SecondOpinion only gives me about a 50/50 chance (at best) that the problem can be repaired. My socket might be loose (the test was apparently inconclusive...the only thing it proved is that I can swoon faster than a Harlequin romance novel heroine). If it's loose, they're going to repair it and give me one that's more "appropriate" (whatever that means). They're also going to make me an extra half-inch longer on my left side because even though I feel like I'm taller, I'm actually still too short. And, yes, that is the first time that the word "Arley" has been found in the same sentence as the phrase "too short" in the history of the universe. (Seriously, TLC better break out the cameras because by the time I get done with this crazy carnival ride, I'm going to be like 19 feet tall). Still no word on why my hip flexors are going all Rip van Winkle on me.

And when can all of this be done? According to his secretary, probably not for another 6 months. (This is not terrible news according to his secretary because the wait-time used to be 3 years, so I guess I should count my blessings on that front). Part of the wait is because the month-long cluster-fuck known as the Olympics is coming to town, which puts everything into a crazy back-log because they're not allowed to do elective surgeries during that time. (Just in case, you know, the entire German hockey team does a massive amount of steroids, gets avascular necrosis and all need hip replacements). The other part is that my case isn't technically an emergency and so I'm not high on the wait list. Now, you might think, "Wait a minute. Isn't your tendon flapping around in the breeze like the backdoor flap of an old man's pajamas?" Yes, this is true, but that shit isn't going to kill me. It's just going to make me walk like a heroin addict. Possibly forever.

At the end of the appointment, Dr. SecondOpinion asked if Dr. ___ would be performing the surgery and my heart momentarily skipped a beat at the thought of having to kick off my New Year with SurgeonWatch2010; (at least I know that I can stalk him at Starbucks now). Luckily, however, when I explained that Dr. ___ had kind of....uh...vanished....Dr. SecondOpinion agreed to do the surgery. I was so happy I could have made him 12 more batches of X-ray cookies.

None of this, however, explains what the hell happened in the first place. I'm not the most aggressive person in the world. To borrow A.'s phrase, I am "too fucking polite," possibly because I am "too Canadian." I am willing to ask a question, but I'm not willing to say, "Hey! Answer my question right fucking now!" Though Dr. SecondOpinion is a fantastic doctor, he doesn't really have time to answer the full page of questions I always write out. (That, to be fair, was actually a strong suit of Dr. ___'s. He didn't mind being peppered with questions). Seeing any surgeon is a little like releasing a genie out of a bottle, except instead of having three wishes, you maybe have time to toss out one or two questions before he dashes out the door to serve the next 12 people who are waiting. Since I knew I could probably only ask one or two, I decided (a good decision, I think) to focus on future-oriented questions, instead of "seriously, how did this happen? Like, seriously, who should I be directing the full force of my rage towards?" questions. This means, however, that I may never know exactly what went wrong: did Dr. ___ fuck up? Did I fuck up? Will I fuck up again during the next surgery?

I left the appointment in a bit of a tailspin. When my mom and I went shopping afterwards, however, there was a minor Christmas miracle. For the past 6 weeks, I have been looking for a pair of Olympic mittens for Karo. She's done a lot for me and I figured this was a small thing to repay her with. It turns out, however, that those Olympic mittens are rare as a sunny day in Vancouver because they tend to sell out 45 minutes after a shipment comes in. Seriously, trying to find those things is like trying to buy ketchup in the Soviet Union circa 1986. Vancouver has a case of mitten fever! To make a long story short, I thought I'd got the right mittens, but they were youth ones, so today I went to the Bay to see if I could find the adult ones. When I asked the clerk, she originally said that they'd sold out and I should try again on Wednesday. Just when I was about to leave, however, she said that she'd bought a pair for her grandson but since it's too late to send them before Christmas, I could have her pair. Aww! What a nice lady. I could have hugged her.

I came home all excited and went to my computer to see if I could find Karo's email asking for the mittens to see if she needed them before Christmas or not. For the life of me I couldn't find the email, which means that perhaps I'm on crack and hallucinated Karo's mitten-related needs, or perhaps someone else asked me for the mittens, not Karo. So Karo, let me know if you do need the mittens and when you need them by. I will send them your way!

A Shout-Out to Denver

My brother Denver has alerted me to the fact that I have not yet mention him on this blog except in the context of his cat, Mr. Chubbz. In fact, I have spent more time discussing the raccoons in my backyard than I have my own brother. And, since Denver has promised to give "Young and Hip" a shout-out on Twitter, I couldn't pass up the chance. (You can tell by this blog why I don't have Twitter; it takes me at least 500 words to say anything).

Actually, Denver deserves a shout-out because he's had to deal with his fair share of hip replacement dramatics. First, he made the mistake of visiting me in the hospital right after surgery, when I was higher than Whitney Houston circa 1994; (morphine is whack). Then, he brought me books from the UBC library, even though I asked for obscure shit. He also worked his connections to put the fear of God in the hospital nursing staff. He did all this for me even though, when he was young, I routinely married him off to neighbourhood girls. I feel a little bad that the only thing I have to offer him in return is last-minute essay editing, since I don't have any connections, marketable skills, or even (since I'm no longer at U of I), a half-decent library card. (Unless he's looking for some catnip, since I'm pretty sure Mika knows a guy).



So, thanks Denver!

The Surgery Hangover

**Note: If you are squeamish, overly sensitive to the pain/suffering of others and/or are eating a lime-green popsicle, you should skip this post**

There's a reason I'm not a big drinker. (Well, ok, there are two. The first reason is that I'm a completely obnoxious drunk and spend most of my time reporting on my level of intoxication with various exclamations of "I'm so drunk! I'm SO drunk! I'm so DRUNK!"). The most important, reason, however, is that drinking makes me really, really sick. The last time I got wasted was on my 25th birthday, when I decided that the best way to celebrate my quarter century (and simutaneously mourn the fact that my hip had recently started subluxing, I was recently single, and I was staring head-first into the end of my elite basketball career) was to follow four shots with a big slice of double-chocolate cake with mocha fudge icing that my friend had kindly spent hours making for me. Cut to me, 15 minutes later, puking in the bathroom of The Esquire and trying to arrange my hip-flexion-less body around the toilet while J. held up my hair. Cut to me, two days later, still laying on my couch nibbling on saltines, getting dizzy at the frenetic camera work on "Iron Chef America" and generally hating the world. Despite my Irish heritage and the fact that I am not exactly waif-like, I am a drinking lightweight, embarrassingly so.

Point is: I hate getting sick. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. I hate it so much that I will spend an evening nursing a beer and making excuses about how early I have to get up the next morning/ how much work I have to do/ how I can't walk far enough to get home without a taxi and I'm broke and I don't want to leave my car parked downtown because how will I get it in the morning; (does this sound familiar, Aussies?) I did not realize, however, that I'm also a painkiller lightweight.

After the surgery, I found myself in the recovery room swaddled in warm blankets (bliss!), slowly drifting down from the sedative cloud, and finding myself the proud owner of a handy little button that would give me as much morphine as I wanted. And, believe me, I wanted it, since as the spinal anesthetic wore off, my hip began to feel, well, like someone had sawed off my hip ball and pounded a large metal stake into my femur. The personal-narcotics-administration device (it has a name, but I'm too lazy to look it up) looks like the buzz-in button on Jeopardy! and I felt like I was on the worst game show ever. Instead of questions, it was unrelenting pain and nausea, and instead of money, it was morphine. I'll take "Things that make you want to saw your leg off and beat yourself into sweet, sweet unconsciousness with it" for $200, Alex!

The next 24 hours went like this: morphine. Puke. Anti-nausea medication. Dry heave, then puke. Various cocktails of narcotic painkillers. Projectile-vomit luridly green bile, the level of disgustingness of which had not been seen since I threw up a fluorescent-green lime popsicle in front of the grandparents of a guy I was dating on a trip to Yosemite because I was carsick, which really made a fantastic first impression. More anti-nausea medication. Dry heave. Grunt hello at visitors, unable to open more than one eye. Sleep. Sleep. Puke. Sleep.

In fact, the ability to cover the front of my hospital gown in stomach acid was pretty much the only thing that the narcotics gave me. I didn't actually get much pain relief. The lowest point came two days after the surgery when my back seized up, my hip was massively bruised and swollen, I couldn't walk, a bad reaction to the surgery tape had left oozing blisters on the back of my leg that caused my thigh to stick to the sheets, nothing was working, I wanted my old hip back, it was 3 a.m. and I showed no signs of falling asleep, I couldn't get out of bed without a team of nurses, nothing was working, nothing would ever work, and I was supposed to be discharged the next day. The nurse who came in to find me sobbing gave me the old "they don't pay me enough to pretend to feel sorry for you" eye roll, put a pillow behind my back and offered me a sedative. I declined and spent the night trying not to wake up the lady in the next bed with my crying.

Before the surgery, the doctor had predicted a recovery course of sunshine, rainbows and butterflies. Reassurances of "you're so young!" and "they get you up and walking the next day!" abounded. I wish that someone would have sat me down and said, "Look, Arles. Let me give this to you straight. Getting your hip replacement is going to suck in ways that your life has never sucked before. You will want to reattach your hip yourself using the bush surgery techniques you've learned from Cormac McCarthy novels. Having a spinal instead of a general anesthetic will not make the levels of suckery any less. You will spend the next two months as a raging, seething ball of frustration and misery." Then, I would have steeled my loins, mustered my courage and marched bravely into battle knowing that I was in for a dogfight. Instead, I felt like a WWI calvary soldier charging confidently into battle with my sword drawn and running head-on into machine-gun fire.

So, those of you who are planning a hip replacement, have a seat. Getting your hip replacement is going to suck in ways that your life has never sucked before. You will want to reattach your hip yourself using the bush surgery techniques you've learned from Cormac McCarthy novels. Having a spinal instead of a general anesthetic will not make the levels of suckery any less. You will spend the next two months as a raging, seething ball of frustration and misery.

You're welcome.

It's a...lump of decaying, knobby femoral head!

**Note: If you are not a fan of hearing about people's surgeries, you should probably scroll down to the next post while thinking happy thoughts about kittens and rainbows**

I wanted to keep the hip. I mean, it was mine. Who fed it a steady diet of delicious calcium via all those chai lattes? Me. Who stressed it to the point of collapse by insisting on going to her mother's step aerobics classes and doing circuit-training Biggest Loser style? Me. Who yanked on my leg whenever the hip came out in the middle of a wheelchair-basketball game and convinced it to stay in its little hip home? Okay, that was Jen Brown and Zach, (with the help of one Gregory James Mantooth), but who had to stick her hand into the fist-sized indentation that opened up on the side of my leg whenever my hip came out and manually power it, since the hip was too busy exploring the rest of my pelvis and not doing its job? That's right. Me.

Besides, I was already using two plaster models of my hips as bookends and I thought the real thing might be a good paperweight. It would have been very satisfying to look at my hip sitting inertly on the table and think, "Who's laughing now, motherf*cker? You've been deported from the nation of Arley. Not so easy to cause problems now, is it?" (Right now, my hip is probably up in hip heaven laughing its ass of at me getting kicked out of America). Many people were grossed out by this, even when I offered to tell them that it was not a hip but a moon rock, but after all the drama my diva hip put me through, I felt like I had earned it.

Alas, it was not to be. Apparently, it's against some biohazard law to keep your own bones, since every bone taken out of someone's body has to be biopsied and safely disposed of. You all can therefore breathe a sigh of relief because you will not see my hip sitting on the mantle like something out of a Margaret Atwood short story. I did, however, get to see it.

I was awake for my hip replacement. "Awake" is perhaps too optimistic a term. I had spinal anesthetic and was sedated, which meant that I spent the surgery in a rather blissful state of semi-consciousness. Though I have never done heroin, I suspect the feeling would be the same. It was like being in a Dan Bejar song. (Actually, I remember having the John Cale song "Half-Past France" stuck in my head, which was a very appropriate soundtrack). In fact, I was so completely indifferent to what was going on that when I felt sawing and pulling and tugging, it seemed to be happening from very far away. They might as well have been doing renovations down the street. I even heard someone say, "Oh my God!" when the hip was taken out and felt completely bored by it. (It turned out that I was the proud owner of the worst hip my surgeon had ever seen).

I was taking a little power nap when my surgeon tapped me on the shoulder. He was holding the hip in the palm of his hand and asked if I wanted to see it. I was expecting something like coral: something brittle and porous and sharp. Instead, the hip looked like a lump of molten glass. It was completely flattened and there were little knobs all over it that stood out in relief because there was a red substance stuck in the grooves and indentations; (I thought it was blood at the time, but I suspect it was the same antibacterial stuff they paint on your leg. My toes were pink for a month post-surgery). The hip was all shiny in the powerful operating-room light and (this could have been the drugs talking), was weirdly lovely. It was a strange feeling being shown a chunk of your own bone, especially since so much of the surgery seemed to follow the script I'd seen watching C-sections on "A Baby Story," (the epidural, the nurse murmuring supportive things, the feelings of tugging and pulling), except that while the new mothers cried with joy at seeing their newborns, I was face-to-face with a chunk of decaying femoral head.

And that was the end of that. The doctor took the hip away (he'd promised to take a picture of it with his camera phone, but he forgot and I was too busy chasing the dragon to remind him) and I was wheeled out of the operating room into recovery, where I was swathed in warm blankets. I remember thinking, "Well, that's over and done with! Let's get the recovery party started! Bring on that morphine drip!" At least I got the morphine....

Things That Surprised Me Post Surgery

1. My tastebuds changed: I am a chai-latte addict. My order: tall, non-fat, no water, extra hot chai latte with an extra shot of God-I'm-Such-A-Yuppie. For the first three weeks after the surgery, however, I couldn't stomach my beloved chai lattes, nor could I tolerate anything remotely sweet. Fruit? Too sweet. Corn? Too sweet. Vegetable soup? Too sweet. Apparently my freaky cyborg hip doesn't have a sweet tooth.

2. I lost a lot of hair: I wasn't expecting this to happen because I didn't have general anesthetic. Lucky for me, my hair before surgery resembled hair children draw on stick figures and it could have done with a thinning out. Now, when I walk down the street, people will no longer think, "Hey, there goes a six-foot tall woman with crazy-person hair." Now, they'll just think, "Why is that woman walking like the Hunchback of Notre Dame?"

3. I needed a nap: Because of my pre-existing anemia and the blood loss from the surgery, I looked like a wax figurine and my "nap to activity" ratio was 1:1. Standing would make me faint. Sitting would make me faint. I felt like a Victorian lady with a too-tight corset and an opium habit.

4. I couldn't walk: Before the surgery, I was walking three miles a day, hiking and generally feeling like a health rock-star. After the surgery, my lazy hip decided to take a long, long nap. It took two weeks for me to be able to move my knee, three weeks to pick my leg up enough to walk with shoes on, four weeks for my abductors to return. I'm still working on the hip flexors, which means I have to go down stairs backwards. Apparently some of this is normal post-surgery, but with all the "they get you up and walking the day of the surgery! People skip out the door after three days" talk, I wasn't prepared for it.

5. Rashes: My skin's kind of a drama queen and I've had rashes all over since the surgery. So between the hair loss and the rashes, I'm red-hot sexy.

A Little Backstory

So why the hip replacement? A little backstory:

Birth to 11: idyllic childhood, mild-to-moderate clumsiness, freakishly tall, made sandcastles during tee-ball games instead of playing outfield, could run as far as my pudgy little legs could carry me.

Aged 11: Slipped the growth plate on my left femoral head. Surgeon (who I distinctly remember was wearing fluorescent spandex pants when I met him -- it was the mid '90s and that sort of thing was apparently acceptable) pinned it back on. Pins wiggled loose. Another surgeon removed the pins. My hip lost blood supply causing avascular necrosis. Still freakishly tall.

Aged 11 to 14: Crutches decorated with shiny stickers, started high-school in a bright blue half-body cast with my legs spread at 45 degrees and a hockey stick casted in between my knees, wheelchairs, jeans with elastic waists and Big Dog T-shirts, not my most glamorous years. Reached the six-foot mark.

Aged 14 to 24: Discovered wheelchair basketball, eventually played on the Canadian national team, won two World Championship gold medals and a bronze medal at the Paralympic Games in Athens, graduated from UVic with a degree in creative writing and a minor in history, general feeling of rock-on-ness. Decided I was able-bodied and broke a tiny bone in my foot during a step aerobics class. Learned the error of my ways, walked with crutches, was hit on with the epic line "hey, sweetheart, what's wrong with your legs? Want me to teach you how to spread them?" Got those crutches run over by a truck during a particularly memorable night. Published a novel. Moved to the States to play varsity ball.

Aged 24 to present: Got a ridiculous case of "super mono" that pretty much sidelined me, hip atrophied, went back to basketball, began getting weird "episodes" where my hip would seem to come out of the socket, my leg would turn blue, my foot would twist at odd angles, and I would shake/ throw up/ generally suck at life. No one ever figured out what exactly the hip was up to, but eventually the femoral head collapsed and I got tired of being stuck for hours with my hip flopping around like a freshly caught salmon (want to not impress people at business meetings? Ask them to tug on your leg to put your hip back in its socket). Graduated and got my Canadian ass back to my home country and, on June 23rd, headed into the operating room to become the proud owner of a new ceramic hip, ready to rock, completely unprepared for what was about to happen.