My former boss (and current friend) came to work truly dejected today.
He’s been complaining about pain in his leg for a few years now. He told me, last week, “Ugh, I’ve been putting it off. But I think my knee is screwed up. I need to see an orthopedist.”
Well, he saw one today. Apparently the orthopedist examined and scanned his knee, and said, “Hmm…your knee is fine. Let’s check your hip.”
Whatever hip examination they do made the doctor frown. He had my friend undergo some scans, and then gave the bad news: “Your hip is shot. You will need a hip-replacement within the next 5 years. It’s only going to get worse.”
:eek:
What’s crazy is that my friend is young (late 30s.) He’s never had a serious injury to that leg or hip. And the saddest thing - he’s a sports/fitness enthusiast: jogging, basketball, softball. I hear from other people that have had hip-replacements - impact activities like this are forbidden once you have the procedure. He’ll basically be limited to swimming, walking and maybe the elliptical machine once it’s done.
How on earth does such a young guy have his hip ruined? Just seems strange; when I hear “hip-replacement” I think person in their 60s, maybe sedentary. My friend is late 30s, fairly athletic.
Happened to a friend of a friend - double hip replacements in her 30s. She had been on protracted heavy steroid treatment for extremely severe allergies/chemical sensitivity, and they did a number on her joints.
I wouldn’t be too surprised if this might happen to me relatively young, too. In my case, my hips* are extremely loose in their sockets and so they slide around and partially dislocate all the damn time.
I’m sure that there may be many potential causes, but I can point you to one possibility.
The males in my paternal line are susceptible to Legg-Perthes Disease (as well as left-handedness, though I don’t hold that abomination against them). They caught my (younger than my dad) uncle’s condition young enough to do some good, and he spent his teenage years on crutches. He’s walked with a limp and an awkward gait since, but his hips are in decent shape.
My dad’s condition progressed more slowly and they didn’t catch it while he was young. By his mid-40s the ball of his femur was almost completely gone, and he had a hip replacement at 44 (maybe 45).
My father was part-time army, part-time farmer, and full-time teacher, so hardly sedentary. And if they caught his 20+ years ago in his early 40s, I wouldn’t be surprised if advances in awareness and technology led to catching it in the late 30s nowadays.
I have two friends who’ve had hip replacements in their late 30’s. There are many causes as mentioned above, many not including injury. Both my friends had congenital problems.
But the surgery is so much better than it was even 20 years ago that the prognosis for recipients is really good. My friends are out hiking and biking with their new hips.
I know someone who had both replaced a fee years ago when he was in his early forties. An active life combined with a lot of contact sports (no actual injury to his hips though) finally led to replacement surgery.
The good news is that since he was already in great shape, his surgery went well. Then he did his physical therapy religiously and continues to work out. It’s only when the weather changes that he walks a little stiffly.
My husband’s cousin has just had both hers done at, I’m going to say mid-twenties (she’s very young, anyway). She has some kind of congenital thing, too - she’s had bad hips since she was a kid. From what she’s said, too, the prognosis is very good with replacement hips these days - apparently she’ll be doing everything you can do with regular hips. The problem with getting them done so young is that she’ll likely have to have them replaced at some point - artificial hips don’t last forever.
My husband’s father is in the middle of having both of his done, too, at 64. They seem to have not great hips in that family.
I turned 52 this year, and I got two new hip joints this year, the right one in January and the left one in September.
Technically, I got two hip resurfacings, sort of like mini-hip replacements. But still, I have titanium joints.
The advantage to resurfacing is that it saves more of the bone in your pelvis and femur than the traditional hip replacement, in which they cut off the ball at the top of your femur. Saving more of the bone is important to me, because at age 52, I intend to live a few more decades, and if I do, I definitely will need two more metal joints put in when these wear out. And it’s best to have more bone left behind to anchor my second pair of new hips to.
Anyway, I’ve played baseball every summer since I was about 8 years old, and played until the summer of 2011. And for most of that time, I played catcher, which is a stressful position for hip and knee joints. I loved playing at that position, but I sure paid for it (even though both of my surgical results are very good).
I have a friend who is finally - after needing it for most of her adult life - getting one soon. In her case it was a congenital issue that wasn’t treated properly when she was young.
The downside is that they don’t know what the long-term prognosis is for hip replacements and a second one is a LOT trickier than the first one. That’s been part of the reason she’s delayed hers this long. The technology and expected lifespan have improved a lot, so they’re more willing to do them on younger people now.
A friend of mine was avid jogger/runner. He recently had surgery on his feet (one at a time) where the toes where intentionally broken and reinserted,.
He says that his problem and nothing to do with his running 20-25 miles per week.:smack:
I knew a guy who had the disease azraiel mentions. He’d had the bones in one hip shaved down once, and limped because of it. The wear and tear from the limping was eventually going to ruin his hips, which would require a hip replacement–probably in his late thirties.
That’s the earliest I’ve ever heard of somebody needing one.
A fringe relative of mine had to have her hip replaced when she was in her late 30s. She used to be a competitive swimmer, that might have had something to do with it.
A friend of mine during my college years had very bad degenerative arthritis in her hips. She had one hip replaced when she was around 26, and the other a year or two later. This was in the mid '80s, when it was still a fairly novel treatment, and her recovery was a lot more difficult than what I’ve seen with older relatives in recent years.
An example of the avascular necrosis condition which USCDiver mentioned was football/baseball star Bo Jackson. He suffered a serious hip injury during an NFL playoff game in 1990 (at age 28) and had his left hip replaced in either late 1991 or early 1992 (after playing in a few games with the White Sox in '91 on the damaged hip). He managed to return to baseball, and played in portions of the '93 and '94 seasons, winning the Comeback Player of the Year award in '93.
I had perthes disease as a kid. I took up running at 36, now I’m 40 and funnily enough the last few years have been the period where I’ve had little to none of the dull pain that has been in that hip my whole life!
