My Biggest Fear

My biggest fear is having a hip replacement. More specifically my biggest fear is going in for hip resurfacing and waking up with a hip replacement. Waking up from surgery and being told that it didn’t all go to plan.

I don’t actually have a problem with having a THR itself, although given the choice between keeping my femoral head or not, I go with keeping it! I think most would. But I know I cannot live with the arthritic pain as it is now and sometimes I think I would happily agree to some sheep’s cartilage or a leg transplant!

I didn’t realise until last week how much this had been sub-consciously playing on my mind. I had been ‘rummaging’ through the older archives on the surfacehippy group messages and had been reading a lot about revisions of BHR to THR, failures, dislocations, going in for BHR and waking up with a THR. Quite frankly I was voluntarily working myself up into a tizzy about it all when the realisation hit me – I am terrified of going in for one surgery and coming out with another. As soon as I had that eureka moment I was able to address it, and let the fear go. This is not without the help of some friends, but at this moment in time my anxiety has been significantly reduced. I’ve been sleeping soundly too.

I will go into my BHR surgery with an open mind. I really want a BHR, but if I do wake up and find that I am the proud new owner of a shiny THR, I will be temporarily disappointed but I’ll let go of it quicker. At the end of the day, it will serve its purpose. Many young people are very happy with their THR’s, I will not consider myself some sort of failure to be joining them if it enables me to get on with my life. There has been too much THR-bashing going on and I’m not surprised so many of us awaiting hip surgery are horribly anxious pre-op. I have a preference (BHR), others have theirs.