“ Are You a (sic) Ole Lady?”: A Yoga Teacher’s Hip Replacement Journey (part 1)

I can still hear my late sister Gail impersonating one of her young elementary school students, checking out her gray hair and asking her with an inquisitive stance, hands on his hips (ha!), head sidecocked with one eye closed, “Are you a (sic) ole lady?” Every time I struggle with stiff joints, unable to put a little dance to my step or a flair to my reach I can hear Gail saying in her student’s voice, “are you a (sic) old lady?”. Sadly, nowadays, the answer is a resounding, YES.

At least, I’m older than I was three years ago. And by 3, I mean in COVID years. For COVID years are more like dog years, multiply by the number that best suits you. For me, that number is 5. At least for now. My joints are stiffer, my muscles not as strong. I keep bumping into things due to poorer vision, dropping stuff, stooping to pick it up, groaning in the process, hoping I can reach it. Sometimes, success! But always, slow and deliberate. Bus drivers see me approaching and put down that little ramp to make my ascent aboard a little easier. Kids dismiss me. 

Though there is hope! I am planning to shrink my COVID years factor. Maybe by summer’s start I’ll feel like I’ve aged only 9 years? Can it be? Can I reverse time? Will my new hip reverse time? Yep, that’s right, this yoga teacher has to get new hips. Almost a year ago I was diagnosed with severe arthritis in both hips. A few weeks ago I underwent my first total hip replacement surgery in my right hip, the left will follow as soon as I am able. 

For a few weeks after my doctor told me, I was in denial. Then, in mourning. How can I, so fit and so active in the gym and the yoga rooms and on the bike trails and the swimming pools, lakes and oceans, how can I have arthritis, and at such a young age to boot? I’ve always maintained a relatively healthy weight and diet. I am barely wrinkled and gray haired, so I just don’t look the part. One day I was in the store with my cane and a puzzled man looked at me and asked, “wha, ya trip or sumthin”? I scowled at him. None of ya, buddy! (unless you read this blog post).

So as I puzzled over the why, I couldn’t help but immediately think of my recent death defying car accident. You just don’t bounce back to the same ole, same ole after breaking 18 bones in the body, all but one in the torso. That changes things, big time. The affected bones are not the same. The surrounding muscles and joints are affected. The fascia, the connective tissue that holds everything together inside changes. The way they all move and interact changes. Scar tissue develops, disrupting the natural flow of the body’s many avenues. The posture and the gait change. It slowed me down. It stopped me for months, the first 4 spent in a Startroopper like torso brace. My muscles atrophied during recovery, spent largely in isolation on a farm, and to make things worse I just didn’t get the physical therapy I needed after the brace was removed. Thank Buddha for Yoga, that helped, but then, boom! Seven years later, COVID.

COVID forced us to sit. And sit. And sit some more. More atrophied muscles. Simultaneously, I was coming off a bad break up, still grappling with my accident pain, and I’ve always been a bit of an introvert, so sitting and working on my website, my jewelry, my 500-hour Yoga certificate, my books and jigsaw puzzles, all the amazing and fun things I did during my downtime, suited me just fine.  And it was fun! I stressed at times, like we all did, but ultimately I made strides and occupied myself quite nicely, but all, while sitting on my butt. Add on three more bad habits I groomed during couch and chair time: coffee, wine, and chips. I had primed my body for arthritis, for diet plays a huge role in inflammation and afterall, arthritis is an inflammation-based condition.

Then I thought of another more long-term and underlying issue,  my bunions. I’ve had them for almost my whole life, they have been very painful at times and in fact, one summer on college break I had a double bunion-ectomy and while I worked hard to be mindful of how I treated my feet thereafter, they came back within the decade. Bunions throw off the alignment of the foot’s metatarsals, setting the stage for a misaligned structure all the way up the skeleton. I can’t help but notice that the worse hip and the worse bunion are of the same leg.

So then, after all this reflection, I took action. Self-care overdrive! Over the next 9 months I got crackin’. I lost 30 pounds. I quit coffee and cut back on my wine and chip consumption. I stoked my 80-ounces-of-water-a-day habit. I bought a new mattress and avoided sitting for more than 15 minutes per sit stint, opting for a more stable and hard surface than a sagging soft couch. I regularly visited a physical therapist and found a good pain management specialist. I changed how I teach yoga, cutting back on Zoom yoga (which requires more demonstrating) and teaching more in person (more observing and adjusting others). I stopped saying yes to every yoga sub request gig I received. I even started using my bunion braces again. I learned to pace myself better, not asking too much from my hips on any given day, resting more, yet sitting less. A paradox? You may think taking a load off is a good thing, but ultimately, it is not.

Sitting is the new smoking, surely you’ve heard? Certainly you’ve noticed how stiff you are after sitting for long stretches of time, car and plane rides are the worst! This is why after surgery doctors want you to move around as soon as you can. Unstimulated, lifeless muscles will hamper your recovery and joints get stiff because they don’t have the surrounding support that strong muscles can give. In addition, studies show that movement actually hydrates your muscles. The more healthy and strong your muscles, the more space you create in the body by allowing it to move around, and the more hydrated the body’s tissues, the more support you’ve provided for the joints, paving the way for more smoothly facilitated movement. 

So what is a joint? Joints are where bone meets bone. Or bones. Ligaments attach bone to bone, limiting the joint’s movement, and tendons are essentially the end of a muscle and attach it to the bone, controlling the joint’s movement. Tendons have more pliability and ligaments very little, if any. They aren’t designed to stretch and return to their natural shape. Fascia, the body’s soft connective tissue, surrounds these tissues helping to hold everything together.

We have many types of joints, and depending on their location and functionality, as well as body type, many sizes and shapes. Your hip joints, like your shoulder joints, are ball and socket joints that provide more mobility than they do stability. We need to flex and bend, extend and straighten, rotate out and rotate in to twist and turn, adduct and abduct the legs and hips to bring them into the body’s midline and away from it. So they take a lot of brunt, as you can imagine. One of my teachers calls them the Grand Central Station of the body, for all movement must pass through this busy main station. That idea deeply resonated with me. The body is an incredibly integrated machine and its inner workings quite complex, both physically and energetically. Even lifting a toe will send reverberations up to the hips and well beyond.

Since every body is different, every body’s hip socket is different. Some provide more mobility than others and it’s important that we understand our limitations and why they exist, yet also not take for granted our capabilities and wide ranges. As a teacher, I get a little nervous when I see students take their poses to the outer limit, needlessly compressing and stressing joints. For even if we have joints that will allow extreme range of motion, we need to exercise caution to limit the stress on joints, especially while bearing weight, minimizing natural and inevitable wear and tear. We don’t have to go to the extreme, we don’t have to impress ourselves, our teachers or our fellow students. We need to protect ourselves. “Will you still love me, will you still need me, when I’m 64?” 

My path? After exhausting all possibilities, surgery, followed by diligent physical therapy and diet in recovery time, and second surgery when I can. I plan to write about not only my experience, but also what I learn over time so that I can share with you these ideas that may help you deal with your own joint issues, for the more we know and understand our body mechanics, the more we may better protect ourselves and prevent, or at least delay and mitigate, debilitating conditions. The hips don’t lie! Stay tuned. 

Read an old, pre-arthritis blog post here where you can learn more about the makeup and function of a joint capsule and how to keep it healthy: