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Getting Hip: Recovery from a Total Hip Replacement by Sigrid Macdonald
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 My Hip Injury
I love summer. Like most captives of Northern Ontario, I eagerly anticipate the end of spring so that I can dispense with my ski jacket, boots, and headband in favor of shorts, T-shirts, and running shoes. I like to sit outside on my front steps listening to the robins sing, watching the neighbors, and basking in the warmth of the sun.
I spent a lot of time sitting on my front steps during the summer of 2000 until I became aware of a nagging pain in my left hip. I've always had to be careful about sitting in certain positions for long periods of time since I fractured and dislocated my hip in an auto accident in 1981. I was visiting my parents in New Jersey when I was hit by a drunk driver and nearly killed. I sustained multiple injuries including a concussion, whiplash, a punctured and collapsed lung, several broken ribs, and a number of broken bones, such as fractures of my hip, pelvis, wrist, arm, knee, and lower leg bones. After three weeks in intensive care, I was moved to the orthopedic ward. I developed Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and suffered from panic attacks, recurrent nightmares about car crashes, and flashbacks for many years. I was 28 years old at the time and as the band R.E.M. so succinctly put it, the accident was the end of my world, as I knew it.
Initially, my hip was set with a closed reduction, meaning that my orthopedic surgeon put my hip back into place manually after it dislodged. However, the nurses in the hospital were busy and did not always answer call bells promptly. One day I was dying for a bedpan and decided that I simply could not wait 20 minutes for a nurse to appear, so I cleverly bent down towards a small cabinet by my bed to get the pan. I was very pleased with myself until I began to experience horrific pain. Sure enough, I had dislocated my hip again by twisting my body forward. This time the solution was not so easy!
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