Where's my walker?

Figure A.

 

"Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh Reilly, Oh Reilly Auto Parts."

As with all good advertising jingles, this one is stuck in my head. Mostly because I'm at an age when parts need replacing. A few years ago, after willfully enduring needless pain, I gave in and took a trip to an orthopedic surgeon who told me the cartilage on my left hip had all but disappeared.

"Bone on bone," he chuckled.

"Ouch," I did not chuckle.

It's likely the right hip, a few years down the road (aka: a few thousand miles of biking, hiking and schlepping) the other one, will need to go as well, he told me. It appears that time has arrived. Perfectly coinciding with the frazzled nerves I am currently experiencing.

I have some funny ideas about the human body. 

Not ha-ha funny, and not about everybody's body, just mine. I know getting an A+ in Freshman Biology at esteemed Syracuse University doesn't make me a "doctor" but I am regular student at the Google Medical Center.

My feeling, and I could very well be proven wrong, is that if I do enough exercise the stinging, often debilitating pain on my right side will dissipate. It will, in the words of our former president while referring to Covid, "just disappear."

And so, counterintuitively, I have not decreased my exercise regime, I have increased it. 

"Hey pesky Femoral Head and Acetabulum (see Figure A.) you think you can keep me down? I've got a potful of caffeinated coffee and some leftover Percoset that says otherwise."

Of course, the pain hasn't disappeared. And tomorrow I will attempt to raise my mileage in another foolhardy attempt. 

Perhaps this is surprising, and I say this with all modesty, I get many emails and private DMs telling me I'm smart. Clearly that is not case. 

When I see the surgeon next week I will ask him if it's possible that while on the gurney and the propofol has me off somewhere in O.R. Margaritaville (hat tip to Ms. Muse) if in addition to replacing my hip joint maybe they can also install a new brain? This one is not working.

"Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh Reilly, Oh Reilly Auto Parts."