My name's David Heuck.
I'm fifty-one years old.
We live here in Pebble Beach, California, and I work for the Pebble Beach company.
In terms of my health, I was probably taking it a little bit for granted.
So, after work, I think it was August two years ago, I went out and played golf three
days in a row in the afternoon and on the end of the third day, I just felt a searing
jolt of pain in my hip.
Naturally, I went onto WebMD and tried to play doctor myself and figured I had bursitis
or something like that.
You know, I was in denial to a large degree even though it was getting worse, 'til my
doctor finally saw me walking and said, "Something's not right," he said, "Look, you've got to
go get an MRI."
I did, the results came back and the radiologist said, "I'm surprised you're able to even walk
on your left hip because it's so messed up."
When my doctor set off on the path of trying to find the right surgeon, he did a lot of
talking with people up in Stanford, and from everybody he talked to, he thought that, Dr.
Miller, his procedure and his cutting edge techniques would be well suited for my situation.
The first meeting with Dr. Miller, he said, "Look, we have to replace your hip."
He goes, "There's a variety of different ways that we can do it.
If you want to walk again, this is the path we're going down."
We are now are performing minimally invasive joint replacements which incorporate a smaller
incision.
So, when less is cut, there's less to heal and patients can recover much faster.
We remove the ball and a portion of the femoral neck, and we remove the damaged cartilage
and bone from the socket side.
Both sides are replaced with metal implants.
The bone grows into and onto this metal and after five, six weeks, this implant has become
part of you.
He said that I'd be getting up and walking the next day, which I couldn't believe.
With the original hip replacements, patients were kept in the hospital until they were
essentially fully recovered.
This process took three to four months.
With a rapid rehab program and a less invasive surgical procedure, we can accomplish all
those same goals within twenty-four to forty-eight hours.
I had surgery Thursday afternoon.
The weirdest thing of all is from the time that I woke up, I was very coherent, and pain-wise,
I have never had any pain.
It was just amazing.
Those first steps are unnerving because you don't want to mess with it.
I was very apprehensive about putting weight on it., but then you take a little baby step,
then take a little bigger step, and you finally realize that your legs not going to fall off,
so I did a little bit of walking, not a lot, and then, you know a day later, I'm hopping
in the car and going home.
If I would have known two years ago, that I would have been out of the hospital in two
days, I'd be back at work in whatever, six days, getting the green light, after five
weeks and a couple of days, to do anything that I wanted to do, I would not have waited
a year and a half to pull the trigger on going and getting something as simple as an X-ray
or an MRI done.
From the standpoint of you thinking about what you can do, I mean my kids are young,
I'm fifty-one, I got a nine-year-old, right?
He wants to get out and he wants to do things, So yeah, I'm looking forward to doing all
those things.
Just being able to go out and participate with your kids is, you know, it's huge.
I'm drawn to the idea of helping people perform their best, whether that's in the sports arena,
or getting around their house.
It's tragic when people can't walk, when they can't do the things they want to do with their
family and when you can give that back to them, it's incredibly rewarding.