Had my right hip replaced November 16, 2002, so it’s now 16 years old. I was 52 years old. I remember the date so vividly because 2 days later my 8 year old nephew Coty was killed in a house fire. I wanted to go back to SD and be with my family so badly but I was stuck in a hospital bed. I didn’t have an easy time of it, physically or emotionally.
Back then when they did a replacement, they cut through the IT band for access, then they used dissolving sutures to close it. Well, I was just a year out of a 6 month fight with gangrene. The surgeon who saved my hand, Dr. Dean Sukin, was actually a hip and knee joint specialist but he happened to be on call the night I went into the ER. So when it came time for the replacement, my choice in surgeons was easy. He knew me, knew my history and what complications we might encounter, and I trusted him completely.
A few weeks after I got home, I felt a ripping sensation in my hip and upper thigh so I called him. Went in and I had ruptured that IT band. He had to go in and repair it. He said that the sutures had dissolved but because of my slowed healing, the tissue let go. So he put in non-dissolving sutures. That worked for a couple more months, then riippp - so back in I went for more surgery on that band with more substantial sutures. On Dec. 20, it happened again and I was back in the OR on December 23rd. He didn’t repair it this time. He went in, looked at it, and later told us that it looked like ripped denim - that the sutures were all still in place on one side just as he’d put them in, but you know how denim kinda shreds apart when it tears? That’s what the IT band looked like, with the sutures on one side and shreds on the other, with no sutures in that side. For a year that wonderful surgeon tried his best, and I did everything he asked, but in the end there was nothing more to do for it. So I have no IT band on the right side, which makes for a very unstable hip.
Now I need the left one done, and I’m absolutely terrified. I remember when he came back into my room after the last attempt at repairing the band, when he said there was no way to fix it. I looked at him and I joked, “You don’t like me very much, do you?” He rubbed his eye and said, “Oh, I like you very much - I’m just scared to death of you!” And it wasn’t because I’d hung him in effigy on my door when I had gangrene. If I have it done, there is still no one I trust more than Saint Sukin. He said that they no longer cut the IT band, but I dunno, guys. And after 16 years of unusual wear on the right one because of the instability, it should probably be redone too. Guess I’ll think about it when my only alternative is to go back to my wheelchair.
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