Adele: I feel like I’m the walking dead.
I’m like a zombie, only they walk a lot faster than I do.
Being active is like breathing air for me.
I feel like I’m 80 and after I have my hip then I can progressively move back into Adele
because I don’t know who this person is.
Tiffany, Adele’s niece: She’s always going, always wanting to go
and always go, go, go, go and then now seeing her never leave the house and when she does
it’s just really, really hard for her.
Adele: I came up here on my bike.
I went over the handle bars.
I thought my life was over, then I heard about the hip replacement and I thought, oh my God,
I could actually have my life back.
I’m gonna be able to live again.
Tiffany: Yeah.
Adele: And I miss that a lot.
I miss living.
Dr. Peter Hanson: Adele has arthritis of the hip.
She’s lost all the cartilege.
I can feel it clunking.
Adele: Yeah, like clunk, clunk, clunk.
It clunks and that…
I feel that.
Dr. Hanson: Yeah.
Ooh, that gives me the heebie jeebies.
When she had that trauma and she just fractured that femoral head, it’s no longer a round
bone in a round socket.
Now you have a square peg trying to articulate in a round hole and we’re going to cut the
ball off that that you saw in that X-ray and then down there we put a spike basically and
we prepare the bone so it will fit exactly and then that’s your new hip.
So instead of going crunch, crunch, crunch, it should be nice and quiet and everybody
won’t hear you coming.
What you’re going to realize is the pain that you’ve had is going to be gone.
Astrid Le-Touzic: Adele will come to total joint clinic today.
She will be able to meet her physical therapist, orthopedic specialist, dietitian and pharmacist.
Paul Hervey, PT: I’m feeling for when it starts getting tight.
Astrid: We’re hoping that we can empower her with
the knowledge, teaching her how to manage her pain and what to anticipate with therapy.
Adele: Pushing a vacuum cleaner, darn, I can’t
push a vacuum cleaner.
How much do you limp with your walking?
All the time.
I’m a limper.
What’s interesting about pain it kind of takes over your mind, as well as your body.
When I lift it it pushes the bone back to bone on bone and it rubs.
Oh my God.
Volunteer: There you go.
Adele: My kids all called me last night and that’s
when I started crying and then it becomes real and you get a little scared.
Pre-op Nurse: How are you feeling this morning?
Adele: Oh, I’m hopeful.
Dr. Mark Christofferson: Every day it’s been hurting more and more
and you do less and less, but now after you get the surgery, every day it’ll start feeling
better, each day something to look forward to.
Dr Hanson: This is a table specially designed for hip
replacements.
The table is basically like a surgical instrument.
By tomorrow she’ll be feeling almost like a new person, that’s the beauty of a total
hip.
You’re making peoples’ lives better.
OR Nurse: Leg up.
Dr. Hanson: Rotation.
Dr. Hanson: So we’re entering the hip joint now and
the hip is really inflamed, which is why she was in so much pain.
So I’m watching this as I go on the screen so we get it right where we want it.
It feels solid.
It sounded solid.
It looks solid.
X-ray in.
I have an X-ray of her hip that we’re doing and an X-ray of her normal hip and I’m overlapping
them and getting them in a position where I can tell if I need to make it longer or
shorter.
That looks great.
It’s exactly the size we want.
We’re done.
Surgery went great.
Vicky, Adele’s sister: I’m so excited.
Dr. Hanson: We’ll get her up today and then we’ll
move around.
Vicky: I’m so excited.
I got to call her kids.
I got to call my girls.
I’m so excited.
So it’s so neat.
(Laugh)
John Regan, PT: Nicely done.
Good.
Now why don’t you put a little bit of weight shift on that left leg and you’re weightbearing,
you can walk.
You just took a step.
You are up and walking the day of a total hip surgery, very nicely done.
Adele: Titanium, ceramic, it’s all good.
I’m half of a bionic woman.
The door of life has opened to me.
The fact that I walk now and I’m not in pain is a… is… is…
I…, you know it is beyond words.
It’s beyond words, it really is.
I can dance.
I can dance through the day, I can dance through night.
I’ll walk down this boardwalk...