The Water-Method Man ...

Back in my college days (ancient history, I know), I went through something of a John Irving jag. Started with the novelist's breakthrough hit, "The World According to Garp," and then went on to read some earlier works, like "The 158-pound Marriage," and later ones, like "Cider House Rules." But oddly, one of my favorites was his second, "The Water Method Man." Little did I realize then how much the title would ring true for me know, well into my 53rd year.

You see, I'm now The Water-Method Man. OK, the definitions are really worlds apart. Irving's protagonist, Fred Trumper, suffers from an unusually narrow urinary tract, and is forced to guzzle inordinate amounts of water to flush out any nasty germs, etc. My "water method" is something entirely different. It is, I hope, my road to recovery.

Six months out from hip surgery (a fluff and buff detailed in prior posts), I needed to get moving again. Not just for my body, which is sagging under the weight of 20 new-found pounds, but also for my sanity. Being active has always always been a coping mechanism of mine. And for the past six months, I've been as active as your typical garden slug. Probably less so.

So I've started running. In the water. In a pool. Now, I understand the benefits. Water's buoyancy will help support my 200-plus pound frame, reducing the stress on my post-op hip (and various other joints). And the natural resistance will help me regain some of the muscle mass that I've frittered away this past half-year. I get that. But, admittedly, it's hard not to be self-conscious running in a pool.

First of all, it just ain't natural. There are very good reasons why people a lot smarter than me have come up with a variety of swim strokes to help men and women carve their way through the water. Freestyle, butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke ... all make more sense than running. And that's pretty much what almost everyone else is doing each morning I get over to the Manchester Athletic Club (I'll address that "almost" part a little later). While all these dedicated swimmers are dutifully filling their lanes, I come in like an aircraft carrier, plodding along, creating a massive wake. I secretly say a word of thanks that everyone else is wearing swim goggles, so I can't see them rolling their eyes.

Second, it's boring. I mean, put-a-vise-on-my-head boring. I'm easily bored anyway (which is why I've always been drawn to sports that require chasing something), but running at a snail's pace in a pool feel's like, well, water torture. There's no Zen escape, no "quite mind, active body" release. It ... is ... drudgery.

To make things worse, the bottom of the pool is pretty slick, making foot placement a precarious proposition. It's one thing to be running in the pool; it's an entirely different matter to be flailing about like I'd scheduled my workouts right after a three-martini lunch. Occasionally, I'll stumble right into the path of an oncoming swimmer, and you can imagine just how well that goes over. Suffice to say that the sauna-quality atmosphere of the MAC pool can get pretty chilly pretty quickly.

Today I had the bright idea of wearing my old windsurfing slippers for a little added grip. The problem was that these Nike slippers were waaaay too old -- they hadn't seen any action in almost two decades -- and promptly disintegrated once I got to work.

On the plus side, I'm not the only person in the pool not swimming. There's actually a water aerobics/social hour session that started shortly after I started treading water. It was, in fact, fairly hilarious. The perky instructor -- who is not in the pool, but can only be described as buoyant herself -- didn't seem to mind one bit that most of the participants (ranging in age from 60 to 90, as best as I could tell) were more interested in catching up on local gossip than actually working out. And the music selection was priceless. Honestly, when was the last time you heard Michael Jackson's "Beat It!" ... ?

But more than anything else, seeing the old-timers' aerobics class was a terrific motivational tool. I know I'm no spring chicken. Not by a long shot. Especially where my hips are concerned. But with all due respect, I'm not ready for the MAC morning water aerobics sessions either. So I put my head down, and kept running against the tide.

The Long Haul ...

Now the hard part starts.

The easy part, as with all surgery, is actually going into the hospital, and letting the doctors open you up, dig around, and make whatever repairs they deem necessary.

That was followed by something of a hip honeymoon. I was coddled at home, and pretty much wherever I went. College kids would open doors for me while I was covering hockey games, and everyday folks would routinely give me a wide berth whenever I came staggering along. It was encouraging, to be honest, to see so many people making the extra effort to care for the gimp. And that, essentially, was what surgery had reduced me to.

I was ordered to avoid full weight bearing on my surgically repaired right hip, primarily because the repairs were more extensive than my surgeon – Dr. Richard Wilk – initially anticipated. When I met with him just prior to surgery, Wilk was candid. Blunt, even. Fifty-year-old hips, he said, rarely are candidates for repair. More often than not, the labral tissue is so shredded that the best option is to simply clean things out.

Fortunately, for me, once he got all his arthroscopic probes and instruments into my hip, Wilk found the tissue was in decent condition, or at least better than expected. True to his word, he made the repairs. I vividly remember, coming out of anesthesia, meeting with Wilk. He told me, in his typical straightforward manner, “I’ve got good news and bad news.”

“OK,” I replied. “I’ll take the good news first.”

“Well, we did a lot more repair work than we originally planned. The tissue was is pretty good shape, so we put in a couple of anchors.”

Good news indeed, I thought. “And the bad news?”

“Better repairs means a longer rehab. You’re going to have to be patient.”

No way around that, I thought. The work was done, and I had specifically asked Wilk to do the repair work if he felt it was worthwhile. Now the ball was, proverbially speaking, in my court. The surgery was behind me. Now, it was all about recovery and rehabilitation.

Predictably, I wasn’t the best patient, post-op. My wife, an occupational therapist, went out of her way to make sure our house (fortunately, a ranch) was free of obstacles. It would be six weeks, minimum, on crutches, to avoid any weight bearing on the repaired hip. When I got antsy, I’d take liberties, walking around the house without crutches. And if they caught me parading about, all my girls would read me the riot act.

I’d commiserate with my older brother, Sean, an orthopedic surgeon from New Hampshire. Sean, 18 months my senior, is just as active, if not more so, than I am. He understands the need to keep moving. Like Woody Allen’s terrific shark analogy in Annie Hall, we believe that if we stop moving forward, we’ll die.

“The problem is that we still think like a couple of guys who are 25,” says Sean. “Our brains won’t admit how old we are. But our bodies are 50, and the fact is, we’ve put our bodies through a lot of wear and tear.”

That wear and tear was plenty evident on my X-rays, which revealed fairly advanced osteo-arthritis on both sides. That’s the reality for me, and my hips. Sean, after taking one quick look at my X-rays, basically told me that my hips didn’t owe me a thing. “I can’t believe you’ve been playing hockey on those hips for the past 20 years,” he said.

Which, of course, made the decision to have surgery that much easier. I didn’t have anything to lose, really. Post-op, Dr. Wilk was noncommittal. The cartilage had, as predicted, flaked off the hip socket like rotted ceiling tiles. There were now small areas where the head of my right femur and the hip socket were bone-on-bone.

Surprisingly, I wasn’t in much discomfort in the week after surgery. I tired easily, which was understandable, since my body was busy repairing itself. Still, I took painkillers for only a couple of days post-op, and then put them aside. I’m not a big medication fan, anyway. I’d would rather know if I’m pushing the joint too hard. I’m no hero, but I believe masking aches can be dangerous. But the truth was, there wasn’t much pain. My spirits soared, perhaps a bit too much too soon.

I went out and bought a huge supply of triple-strength Osteo-BiFlex, with the hope it would accelerate the healing process. Though considered suspect by some, the glucosamine/chondroitin formula couldn’t hurt, said Wilk. It wasn’t the miracle supplement (“Clinically shown joint within 7 days!”) that the package promised it was, he said, but there wasn’t any real downside, either. My body would either take to it, or it wouldn’t. Simple as that.

Today, six weeks out from my surgery, I’m finally off the crutches. That mean it’s time to start rehabbing. I’ve got a date with the physical therapist next week, and hope to get a regimen that will ultimately get me back on the ice, and the slopes, and the bike, and the soccer pitch, sometime in early 2011. My surgeon has warned me not to get too optimistic, but I can’t help myself. It’s my nature. I have a history of getting injured, But I’ve also been a pretty quick healer.

Of course, I also have hips that are a candidate for carbon dating. Father Time doesn’t really care about my hopes and dreams and silly, old-man expectations. I want another bite of the apple; I’ll admit that. Wilk, though specifically stating that he doesn’t like making predictions, nonetheless gave me some odds to keep in mind, as parameters. The likelihood that I’d be able to play hockey again was pretty encouraging: 80 percent. The chances of playing goal again? Not so good. Probably 15-20 percent.

But I’ll take those odds. What choice do I have? Plus, it’s time to stop wondering, and time to get to work.