John Harbour, a patient at Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, has turned his hip replacement into a book. It is called Diary of Hippie: A Real-Life Journal of What to Expect during a Total Hip Replacement, and it follows him from the diagnosis, through the search for an orthopedic surgeon, to recovery.
Harbour lived with arthritis in his right hip for years. He was 40 when he was first diagnosed, and for a long time he put surgery off because he worried about infection and the operation itself. Then bone spurs formed in the joint. His pain grew, his range of motion shrank and he could walk less and less. Golf, racquetball and fly fishing all went, while his workouts came down to swimming.
In May 2017 he looked into HSS surgeons, narrowed the list to three and picked Dr. Geoffrey H. Westrich, a hip and knee replacement surgeon at the hospital. The operation took place on June 1.
The results changed his days. Harbour now walks for miles on New York City streets without pain, and he sleeps through the night in different positions. That September he went trout fishing for the first time in three years. By November he was kicking a soccer ball with his physical therapist. He described the surgery as the best decision of his life, apart from marrying his wife.
Dr. Westrich welcomed the book because most writing about medical procedures comes from doctors or other health professionals. A patient’s view is rare, he noted, and the book holds practical information for anyone weighing a hip replacement or already scheduled for one.
Harbour also used the thank-you page of the book to credit the HSS staff who cared for him.