Hip replacement is something that anyone who wears out their hip joint could need but the recovery process will be different for everyone. If you have Spina Bifida it common to have dysplasia and for your hips to be dislocated but it is okay to leave it alone unless it starts to give you pain. In 2020 I had to consider hip replacement surgery because one of my hips became so painful I could barely move and I was not okay living with that much pain. I have lost movement since that surgery that we are hoping will come back and sometimes people will ask given I lost if I regret it. I do have some moments when I wish life was as easy as it used to be but I wouldn’t say that I totally regret doing it because I can move even though I may be slow. Hip replacement surgery is different when you have Spina Bifida and there is typically more involved because you have to cut the bone when your hips are dislocated to be able to put in the right position which you wouldn’t have to do in a standard hip replacement. In this post, I am going to talk about some positives of hip replacement surgery and why I don’t regret it.
I have less pain- The only reason I even considered hip replacement was that I was in such pain that I could barely move. Less mobility is frustrating and I wish I would have known prior to having surgery that I’d lose mobility for years and I do have moments when I wish could extend my leg like I used to be able to. It is often assumed that because I lost mobility I must regret it and give it to you that life is hard but I don’t think to myself I wish it was never done and the only time I may have feelings of regret is when people in my life won’t stop bugging me about exercising more to regain movement. Before hip replacement, I had a lot of pain to the point I could barely move without complete agony and although I could have chosen to live in pain I don’t think I would have had more mobility because I wouldn’t want to move and I would even argue that I’d have less mobility than I do now. I might have been able to fully extend my leg if I never had hip replacement surgery but I would have to stop exercising without a hip replacement because it would have caused me too much pain. If I would have never done the surgery I still would have lost mobility and it would have just been in a different form so either way there was no easy solution to where I’d have less pain and mobility. I may not be able to extend my leg fully but that is okay because being restricted from doing things due to pain affects your quality of life and in my opinion is way worse.
It taught me how to be mindful of my nutrition– Nutrition plays a huge part in your overall well-being and seventy to eighty percent of how you look isn’t your exercise routine but comes down to the foods you eat. When you lose mobility you would be surprised by how much less you move because the amount of exercise you can do with no leg movement is literally slashed in half. I am not one of those people who will have a panic attack and start dieting if I gained five pounds because I know it’s a part of getting older and weight management can be even more difficult if your not able to exercise so I try my best to give myself some self-love. If there is one thing that I have learned from years of no mobility it’s how to be more mindful of your nutrition because eating the right kinds of food supports your healing is such a huge way and I can’t stress that enough. I will not make poor nutrition choices on a regular basis because I cannot depend on exercise to burn it off which I may have depended on prior to surgery. I do not have perfect nutrition by any means but I do make an extra effort to eat healthier because good nutrition is a big part of my hip replacement journey and is so important for anyone trying to heal.
I am used to it– People sometimes think that I get depressed because of my loss of movement but I really don’t and by this point my mobility loss is my new normal. I have some moments when I get frustrated with my lack of mobility like anyone would but most of the time I am not thinking about how much mobility I have lost. It would be nice if I regained movement but if it doesn’t I will be okay because by this point I have already adapted my life for less mobility and it would just become my new normal. I don’t think of my loss of mobility as something that I no longer have but more like a different challenge which I will always have as a disabled person.
I enjoy not having to exercise as much- Before I exercised six days a week but now I don’t do that because a lot of the exercises I was doing you can’t do with no movement. I miss being able to do Pilates but at the same time, I also enjoy being able to exercise for an hour three days a week and still get the same results. I think if I exercised a little bit more I would regain strength faster but I am not motivated to do that because I think I have enjoyed exercising less way too much! I hate weight-lifting which is the only form of exercise I can do right now but at the same time, I do enjoy not having to do it as often. I think prior to surgery I may have done too much exercise for my disabled body and now that I was forced to unlearn that it would be hard for me to get motivated to do my old routine.
It taught me how to listen to my body- Before I had hip replacement I would exercise six days a week with no excuses regardless of how I was feeling which was not healthy because a lot of the time I triggered migraine for refusing to take more than one rest day. I can’t exercise as much but when I do I have to pay extra attention to how my body is feeling because I don’t want to be putting too much pressure in areas that still need healing. Before I had hip replacement surgery I don’t think I understood the importance of listening to your body because I was following way too many people that said exercise every single day with no excuses but now I have a totally mindset. If there is one thing that I learned from hip replacement it’s how to listen and respect my body because I don’t think I would have ever learned that listen if I wasn’t forced to. I had a serious obsession with exercise prior to surgery and got super stressed when I skipped a workout but now I have unlearned all of that and am not afraid of skipping a workout because sometimes it’s better to take a rest day.
Hip replacement surgery is frustrating but even though something is hard that doesn’t mean you regret it. My whole life has been filled with challenges and although less mobility is a new thing for me it’s nothing that I have not been able to handle because my whole life I have been learning different things to make my life easier. If an abled person were to suddenly lose mobility it would probably be harder on their mental health than it was for me but as a disabled person, it’s different because you are used to living with challenges. I do long for the day when I can extend my leg fully and am able to have more options for exercise but if it doesn’t happen I’ll be fine because for me it will just be a different set of challenges. When you live with less mobility it’s frustrating but so is everything in life and you shouldn’t confuse a little annoyance with regretting it because I wouldn’t take back my decision to have a hip replacement. I am glad I did it because even though I am restricted in some types of movement I have less pain which would I think is more important than being able to do leg extensions. . Hip replacement surgery has some negatives associated with it but overall I would give it a positive experience because I have a great doctor that I would recommend to anyone who had hip issues. The only thing I wish I would have done is educate myself better because I had no idea what I was doing and basically was going in blind.. Do you have feelings of regret after hip replacement surgery?
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