I could see it coming weeks before the official announcement. But when Health Minister Adrian Dix announced that the province was cancelling elective surgeries to free hospital beds for COVID-19 patients, the reality hit.
Like so many other people in B.C., I’ve had my hip-replacement surgery, scheduled for this month, postponed indefinitely.
I learned I was a candidate for a hip replacement last October after returning from a six-week holiday in Newfoundland and Britain that involved, ironically, a lot of walking.
The news was not unexpected, but still surprising. I was 65 but fit and healthy. Both my parents lived to 92 and remained active into their 80s. My mom was still pulling down shifts at Eaton’s in her late 60s.
I was told to plan for surgery “in March or April,” and given my level of activity last fall, I took a rather cavalier approach to the date. Surely I would stride purposefully into the hospital and be one of those who recovers quickly.
“You’ll bounce right back,” my optimistic friends told me. “I was dancing again within three months,” said a member of my contemporary dance class, who exposed her new hip to the less-forgiving pursuit of flamenco.
But as fall yielded to winter, I noticed my hip worsening. By January, I dropped out of my class, impatient of having to sideline myself during an increasing number of moves.
Even walking was becoming problematic. In September, while I was traversing the John Muir Way in Scotland and logging in excess of 20 kilometres on some days, I used my hiking poles. It seemed appropriate then. I was on a TRAIL! And poles evoked an image of fitness and vigour.
Yet, I ditched them whenever I was in a town or a city, unwilling to becoming a “pole person” in an urban setting.
Now, I’m eyeing those poles again. My hip no longer “loosens up” after several minutes of walking. I’m taking the elevator — previously an anathema to me — because even stairs with railings are painful. And getting out of my comfy but yielding couch requires the kind of extra push I considered the territory of the elderly.
I’m having to accept that this state will be mine to bear for many more months. I understand the need to free up hospital beds now to avoid installing a field hospital in Beacon Hill Park later.
Yet standing in the chill and damp on those six-foot-interval lines outside stores hurts. Trying to gracefully pivot when suddenly confronting another shopper in the household-cleaner aisle becomes a slow, cumbersome two-step that I once thought confined to the arthritic and the old.
Like so many “boomers,” I thought I was at least a decade away from restrictions usually associated with “the elderly.” Now I find myself feeling empathy for the stooped woman in front of me gingerly wheeling her walker up the street. I wait patiently for the weathered man who takes his time navigating a couple of steps.
These people are my tribe now. The focused joggers, the lithe yoga practitioners, the determined hikers are no longer my identity groups. Post surgery, I hope to once again lace up my hiking boots or stride into a dance studio. But there’s no guarantee my new hip will respond like my old one did for so many years.
In a recent COVID-19 update, Dix gave a shout-out to the many people whose elective surgeries were eliminated in the understandable need to plan for a pandemic response. We haven’t forgotten you, he said. It was surprisingly reassuring to hear.
Even if I meet the optimistic recovery forecasts of my friends, I hope the patience and empathy I now share with those whose life restrictions can’t be easily resolved through surgery has worked its way into my diminished bones.
I suspect COVID-19 is prompting much self-reflection as we let go of what was “normal” and adapt to new practices necessary to ensure our social systems don’t crumble under unexpected demands. Even as I mourn my compromised mobility, I have friends who wonder if their cancer treatments will proceed or if they will be able to visit hospitalized gravely ill loved ones. A gimpy hip that prompts an image re-evaluation seems minor in comparison.
It’s just one shift in a seismic upheaval that is enveloping our planet. And if we can all hang onto the individual and societal changes we’re making to adapt to our new reality, our society will be better for it when we’re once again permitted to hug, and dance and walk without poles.
Patty Pitts is a communications professional and former jogger, hiker and dancer who hopes to once again engage in the latter two activities in the future.
