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Sunsets in Battersea

The upside of hip replacement recovery during lockdown

By Georgios Vasilopoulos

September 12^th, 2020

Back in January, when the world was still a relatively normal place, I had a long-awaited total hip replacement to sort out a genetic issue which caused my hip to prematurely wear out. The issue had progressed over ten years—from mildly annoying at the beginning to constant agony during the last year before surgery. I was unable to walk more than 20 metres without using crutches and it was, unsurprisingly, limiting my ability to carry on with day-to-day life.

I was offered a choice for the procedure—spinal block with light sedation or general anaesthetic. I didn’t even have to think about that one—spinal block all the way! In a nutshell, general anaesthetic is half a step off death (there’s a reason why anaesthetists get paid so much), whereas a spinal block with light sedation is like a beautifully refreshing nap. Either way you ain’t feeling nothing but, after a spinal block, you’re awake—like properly awake—immediately. No three-day ‘hangover’, no stopped peristalsis, much lower risk of venous thromboembolism. Let’s just say I’m a fan.

On waking—bespoke, Swiss-made Symbios April Ceramic acetabular cup, Biolox Delta head and SPS Evolution titanium stem now in place—there was an hour or so of channeling Uma in Kill Bill Volume 1: “First things first. Wiggle your big toe.” Yep, you’re dead from the waist down. Slowly the toes start working, then the ankles, then the knees and, finally, everything comes back to life.

Within two hours of surgery I was hobbling around with a Zimmer frame, two hours after that I did my stairs—key post-operative milestones complete. While my surgeon seemed happy for me to go home same day, the ward staff weren’t having it. That evening, I ‘escaped’ to the Starbucks near the hospital for a strong, milky coffee, returning shortly thereafter for my slumber, which was pockmarked by annoyingly frequent observations.

I did go home the next day—getting into a taxi was... an interesting experience... but nothing like trying to get back out of it on the other end. For the next week, after my liver and kidneys had filtered the best of the painkillers out of my body, life was challenging to say the least. To get a prosthetic hip in place means cutting through a good number of muscles which are sewn back up individually—and they tend to get pretty angry afterwards. Getting out of bed, putting on socks, coming in for landing onto the toilet seat—all something of a struggle.

My physiotherapy started ten days after surgery—slowly, at first, with a handful of activities, but progressing quickly to a considerable number of strengthening exercises. In mid-March I hired a personal trainer with a background in sports medicine—someone to whom I could forward on my physiotherapist’s exercises and have her turn them into a holistic, full-body workout routine to start whipping me into better shape than I’ve been in the last decade. Or two. But one session in, and COVID-19 lockdown hit the UK like an asteroid, triggering the next ice age. Life froze. Shops, gyms, restaurants and pubs boarded up. You could choose a road, lay out a tartan blanket on the centreline and have a picnic with Marks & Spencer chicken goujons and chargrilled calamari rings, finishing off with a handful of gelatine-free Percy Pigs. Without seeing a car or another person.

Cue interactive workout app. I film a few rounds of each exercise, comment on the effort and pain, my coach comes back with comments and tailors my routine. Not being at the gym means not having to cover her overhead, which keeps the cost reasonable. The routines vary in length from 30 minutes on an active recovery day, to 90 minutes on a strength training day. Seven days a week. As my surgeon said: “The success of this procedure is directly proportional to effort you put into the recovery.”

30-second Copenhagen plank hold, anyone?

I am fortunate to live in a building with a green roof. Think private park, up in the sky. With COVID in full swing and the caretakers furloughed, the garden was left to grow wild. Lying on my mat looking up at the sky, surrounded by bolting wheatgrass and lavender plants, the ambiance is almost convincing enough to pass for a field in southern France—when the weather behaves. Well, until a cyclist swears a blue streak at an impatient driver on the roadway far below, anyway.

Being geographically aligned with one of the runways at Heathrow airport means a plane passing by at low altitude during its final descent every 30–60 seconds—annoying for some, I’m sure, but I find it comforting and soothing, perhaps a reminder of normality.

Doing a non-trivial amount of exercise each evening has been key to my wellbeing through the pandemic. Getting out of my flat and having some ‘me time’ in a peaceful outdoor space, noise-cancelling earphones stuck in, playing music of my choice, being away from so… much… ‘stupid’… on the streets below. As someone who has worked in public health for nearly two decades, if there is one thing this pandemic has taught me, it’s that when human beings are presented with the unknown, FEAR—as in ‘Forget Evidence And Reason’—kicks in. From loo roll, flour and yeast hoarding to fights about wearing masks in shops and politicising medical guidance—people do some crazy, selfish things. And it’s such a pleasure to be distanced from all that, even if just for a little while each day.

Huge credit to my surgeon, who did such a skilled and precise job. For the life of me, I have absolutely no awareness that this bio-mechanical hip, now living inside me, is not the real thing. And to my coach. Her anatomic knowledge and rare balance of motivation and empathy has left me with more energy, confidence and strength than I can remember.

The icing on the cake? I’ve seen more sunsets in the last few months, from start to finish, than I have in the past decade. Clear ones, cloudy ones, stormy ones. And all the better from a garden in the sky. I’ve shared a few below—what a way to end each day.