Sex & Sports • Mrs. Linklater's Top 2 Reasons for Anterior Hip Surgery

There I said it. If you want to have sex without silly diagrams and resume your tennis/golf/bowling/cycling/volleyball/powerlifting again, you need anterior hip replacement surgery, assuming your problem is a hip and not a bad knee, a broken arm, or hemorrhoids. 

          As part of Mrs. Linklater's ad nauseum blatheramas on how anterior hip surgery saved her from a life of riding a Mobility Scooter to the bathroom, she has finally learned a few things about how to properly market this orthopedic miracle. 

Picture: Geoffrey Robinson / Rex Features

          No longer does she try to describe the unique mechanics of the 4-inch anterior [front] incision vis a vis an 11-inch posterior [back] or lateral [side] incision, or list the benefits of the remarkable table developed for anterior surgery, which allows both hips to be done at once, for starters. Nor does she bother to point out how much faster you will recuperate. And she finally gave up waxing rapturously about the lack of ANY restrictions after surgery, because, frankly, people's eyes just glaze over. 
          Apparently, nobody gives a shit about that stuff, except the docs and old jocks like herself. It's kind of like trying to teach a woman the X's and O's of football when all she wants to do, uh, is pork a player. [Mrs. Linklater would like to point out that she is a notable exception to this inflammatory, sexist assumption]. 
          But it's true. All anybody wants to know about the benefits of anterior hip replacement surgery -- or any hip surgery for that matter -- is, "What's in it for ME?" How much they can expect to do after the surgery is done? 
          It might be worth noting that pre-Obamacare, Mrs. Linklater suffered on crutches for five years, waiting for Medicare. She was so crippled there were some docs who didn't think she would ever walk normally again. Afterward, one of those same docs saw her run across the hot sand at the beach. He was suitably impressed.
          Just watch somebody's eyes light up when you tell them they can do "sex and sports."  Among other things. Here's a two-year-old YouTube video of a high school classmate of Mrs. Linklater's, who was visiting from California. A former professional ballerina, she was 68 when she volunteered to show a group of us how limber she is AFTER anterior surgery on both hips. Here's the second video she did for Mrs. L that evening.

          Basically, with anterior surgery you can resume the sex you were having and play the sports you had to quit, although maybe no marathon running. Sex and sports are the only two activities anyone of hip replacement age really cares about. And they're the first to go when your hips go. 

          Mrs. Linklater realized she had cracked the anterior hip replacement code when she started telling people they could get laid in their favorite position and play sports again, instead of trying to explain all the anatomical and medical do-dah that nobody gets.  
          For instance, one of Mrs. Linklater's bff's had a freak accident getting into a cab a few years ago. Somehow she did something to wrench her hip and it was never the same. Even worse, she aggravated it again during an evening of conjugal bliss, so much so, that her hip was in constant pain. She couldn't work out. She couldn't provide the companionship to which her husband had become accustomed. No sex. No sports. Yep. Time to get her hip replaced. 
          Like so many others, Mrs. L's friend started her research by asking around to get recommendations for a doc to do the surgery. Most people she knew were giving her names of renowned M.D.'s in the area, since that's the route most of us take. The more famous a doc, the better he must be, right? She mentioned a famous Chicago orthopod who had built quite a reputation for fixing knees as well as hips. As a concerned and considerate friend, Mrs. Linklater felt it necessary to dismiss him by saying, "But he doesn't do anterior surgery." Followed by the magic words, "sex and sports." 
          After doing research on the internet for her own hip replacement surgery, Mrs. L decided that the fame of the doctor was irrelevant to the type of hip surgery he offered. At first, the type of implant seemed to be the most important part of the process, until she began reading the history of anterior surgery. 
          Anterior surgery, with its unique operating table, has been around since the forties. It was first developed in France and Germany. Back then we didn't trust Germany. And we have always had a love/hate thing with France. Typically, medical centers in the U.S. suffer from "Not Invented Here" syndrome. If their hospital doesn't do a particular kind of surgery, it doesn't exist. Or worse, they try to develop their own version. 
          But don't go by the opinions of this endlessly ranting female, DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH. You'll discover, for instance, that a RECENT ARTICLE in the New York Times claimed anterior surgery was a new approach. NOT!! Mrs. Linklater even has an email forwarded from a Mayo orthopod who called it experimental, back when she was looking into the surgery in 2009. Hold it! Not so fast, anesthetic breath.
          Probably the best comparison is to have one hip done using one of the older techniques and the other hip done the right, er, anterior way. Not that Mrs. Linklater would ever admit to bias. 
          On the other hand, no matter how often she used "sex and sports" correctly in a sentence, Mrs. L couldn't convince the sister of a former boyfriend that she should opt for anterior surgery. Instead, his sister chose a well-regarded society doc who did the first of her two bad hips with the posterior procedure. 
          Meanwhile, thanks to Mrs. Linklater's endless sex and sports mantra, plus the fact that he had a girlfriend AND wanted to resume playing singles in tennis again, Mrs. L's ex-boyfriend cancelled his prior date with posterior hip surgery and switched to anterior surgery. But only after he talked to Mrs. L's doc and did an amount of internet research worthy of his Harvard and University of Chicago degrees. 
          So while his sister spent a long time in re-hab, he was home on day two. Needless to say, after the long recovery following her first hip replacement, his sister choose anterior surgery for her other hip replacement. One could argue that makes her a pretty damn good judge of both types of surgery, n'est-ce pas? And just how does she compare them? 
          No comparison.
          Back to Mrs. Linklater's girlfriend. With just a little nagging, she talked to Mrs. L's orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Michael Stover, who is at Northwestern Medical Center in Chicago. [Stover's name is typed out so he'll get a shout out from his mentor, Dr. Joel Matta, in Santa Monica, CA. Dr. Matta is ground zero. He's the U.S. doc who brought anterior surgery from France to the states three decades ago. Dr. Stover studied with him and brought anterior surgery to Chicago. Dr. Matta has software that keeps tabs each time I mention his or Stover's name on the internet -- okay each time ANYONE mentions their names]. But we digress. 
          Like an annoying mosquito in her friend's ear, Mrs. Linklater constantly reminded her girlfriend about the two most important reasons she should talk to Dr. Stover. Have we mentioned sex and sports yet?  
          Or you can always talk to pro golfer, Tom Watson -- about the sports part at least. Here's a blog post Mrs. L wrote about Watson's amazing play just months after his anterior hip surgery with Dr. Matta. If Mrs. L had continued to tell her girlfriend that the reason to see Dr. Stover was that anterior hip surgery has the lowest rate of post surgical dislocation, NO POST-OP RESTRICTIONS*, faster healing, less muscle damage, blah blah blah blah, she would have been asleep before Mrs. Linklater finished her spiel. 
          But just three weeks ago, thankfully, she caved to Mrs. L's relentless badgering and had the anterior surgery. Got up and walked for fifteen minutes the same day. Her husband claimed in an email that she was already asking to have sex. [He may have been exaggerating]. Anyway, she went home in less than 36 hours. No doubt with dreams of sex and sports dancing in her head. 
          Mrs. Linklater [who is getting tired of writing in the third person] will be having lunch with her newly hipped friend next week, 25 days after surgery. Next, her girlfriend and her husband will be throwing a Christmas party a week after that. If history is any indicator, her husband will probably announce to the assembled holiday crowd how many times they've had sex since the surgery.[NOTE: The lunch and Christmas party were a big success. Mrs. L's friend was good as new. And her husband didn't make any embarrassing announcements. Plus, at the party, after seeing how well the hostess was getting about, one of the guests, who was using a cane, decided to see Dr. Stover for her own bad hip. I'm sure all she needed to hear was "sex and sports."]
  

*Just an FYI, if you interview a doc who claims to perform anterior hip replacement surgery, BUT he has POST-OP RESTRICTIONS on your movement afterward, run, do not walk, away from him. He's not doing this type of anterior surgery. Or he's just not very good at it. The procedure requires more technical skill by the doctor than posterior or lateral techniques or any combination of the two. And don't let the term "minimally invasive" lull you into a stupor. Doctors throw the term around like confetti at a parade.