Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to I Choose Me with Jenny Garth. Hi, everyone,
welcome to I Choose Me. This podcast is all about
the choices we make and where they lead us. On
today's podcast, I want to tell you something, and most
people are pretty shocked when I tell them this. I've
(00:25):
had both my hips replaced. Yep. You know. I live
a very healthy life, and I think it shocks people
to hear that because I work out so hard. I
post my workouts. I'm all about healthy and active. But
I want to talk about the experience today because I'm
on the other side of it now, and maybe somebody
(00:49):
listening is going through this experience that I went through.
Maybe you're feeling pain, maybe you're ignoring it. Maybe you
know something's right, but you don't want to go to
the doctor, and maybe you're feeling really frustrated. I want
you to know that you are not alone. It was
(01:10):
early twenty twenty, right after the shutdown. I had been
dealing with hip problems, hip pain, hip clicking pretty much
all my life. I used to be a dancer and
I would stretch, and I would stretch through my hip
and it would kind of click and it didn't bother me.
(01:30):
It didn't hurt that much. It was just a little embarrassing.
And the click got louder and louder until it started
to become like a clunk, you know. It was my
hip joint would feel like it was like clunking into
position or clunking as I walked, and eventually it started
to basically give out from time to time whenever I
(01:53):
would put weight on it. So it was the winter
of twenty nineteen going into twenty twenty that my family
and I had gone on a ski trip we always
like to try to do every winter, and my hips
were hurting so badly that I couldn't ski with them.
I couldn't get on the lift, I couldn't get off
(02:14):
the lift, I could not go down the mountain. So
I had to just sort of sit that out, and
I was like, oh man, this sucks. I don't want
this life. I don't want to slow down. I'm too
young to have to worry about, you know, pain and
not be able to do things because I'm in pain, Like,
I need to go get this looked at once and
(02:36):
for all. So I went and I sought out a doctor,
a surgeon who specializes in hips, and I went to
see him, got my X rays, which led me to
getting an MRI, which led me to the diagnosis that
I needed to have my hip replaced. And I was
(02:58):
blown away because that's not what I was expecting to hear.
I don't know why, but I just felt like, Oh,
I'm too young for this. US kidding. Your hip replace
that's for old people. My parents are older, they had
hip replacements. That sounds like a big deal, and I'm
not sure I want to do that. So I sort
of sat with that news for a while and lived
(03:19):
with the pain a little bit more and came to
the place where I couldn't even take my dogs on
a walk or go like on a family walk around
the neighborhood. And I just didn't want to live like that.
You know, I have a younger husband and I'd like
to keep up with them. So I opted to go
in and get my left hip replaced. And I was
(03:41):
so afraid when I went in for that first operation,
I had no idea what was going to happen. I honestly,
every time the doctor would talk about what the procedure
was going to be, and you know, the recovery and
all those things, my brain just literally stopped listening and
didn't want to hear anything. So I went into that
(04:01):
operation saying, Okay, I don't know what you're about to
do to me, but do it good because this is
really important. And I came out and I was like, wait,
what has happened? And then I saw the X rays
of what they had done to me. And not until
after my surgery did I google what a hip replacement
surgery looks like, because I knew I would be too
(04:23):
scared and I would back out, but it was really
something that had to be done. So yeah, I learned
a lot about hips that spring, and I kept it
a secret from the world because I was a little
embarrassed and I didn't want people to have, you know,
that perception of me that I was getting old and
(04:46):
breaking down, and so really only my family knew, and
my mom and my best friends, and it was something
that I didn't want to share with anybody, So I
kept the recovery to myself. I didn't, you know, post
about it or talk about it to anyone, and I
slowly started to recover, and that's when I decided to
(05:08):
get in the best shape of my life. I decided
I'm not going to let this define me. So what,
I have a fake hip. It feels great. Sometimes I
forget that I even have it. And I just started
getting back into working out, gradually building up more and
more strength, and I think that's about the time that
I started sharing my workout videos with you guys. Those
(05:29):
first videos that I started sharing were post hip replacement,
but nobody knew. And then four years later, my right
hip started to give me problems started, that clicking started,
that clunking started, that giving out, and I knew what
I had to do. So I went back in to
(05:50):
the same surgeon, doctor Tiberry, and I said, let's do
the other one. And the other one was done. It
has been a slightly I expected it to be just
like the same recovery time. Frankly, very easy for me
personally because I was in good shape and I was
healthy and I'm young, so I expected it to be,
(06:14):
you know, a piece of cake. The second hip was
not as easy to heal. I'm only about five months
out from my second hip replacement. Having too feels kind
of like a different ballgame. But it is slowly healing,
and I have returned to the gym and I've built
(06:35):
up and I'm pretty much pretty much back to where
I was. I'm still working through the pain and still
working on, you know, my body, accepting what's going on
in there. But it's a decision that I am glad
that I made, and I just want to be able
(06:55):
to share that with the world. I want to be
able to talk about it and help people who might
be dealing with hit pain or any other joint pain,
and they might be so scared because it is a
very scary thing to go under the knife, you know,
And I just want to be able to sort of
destigmatize the concept that fake hips are only for old people.
(07:21):
That's not true. Everybody you know has their different reasons
and their different experiences with their bodies. So I just
want to share mine in hopes that it maybe could
help one of you listening. So today I want to
bring in the surgeon who did both of my hip replacements.
I'm very, very grateful to him. He is a board
(07:45):
certified orthopedic surgeon who specializes in hip any replacements. He
is my doctor and I like him a lot. Please
welcome doctor Taberry to the I Choose Me Podcast. Welcome, Welcome,
Thank you, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
This is a big moment for me. I mean, can
you believe it that I'm sharing this incredibly intimate story
with the world.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
It's a big deal.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
It's a big thing that people go through and everyone
kind of reacts to it differently.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
So yeah, thank for you.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
People you know, are shocked when I tell them when
they find out about this about my hips, the hips
that don't lie, they don't get it because I'm so
you know, I'm very healthy, I'm so active, I you know,
share my videos and hopes to inspire others and keep
myself going. So people are really shocked when they hear
(08:44):
about this, and I'm only fifty two. Is it common
to replace such a youngster's hips.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Well, I guess I would. You know, it would depend
on what you mean by common. I mean, to answer
the question directly, it's not that uncommon. The average age
for this procedure is still in the sixties, so it's
certainly below average age.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Is you know, most people.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Might imagine hip arthritis and hip replacements in the fifties
is becoming pretty common or be pretty frequently done. And
you know, people like me see patients at your age
all the time.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
So ough I thought I was special.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Well, I didn't say you weren't special, but we definitely
see people your age pretty often.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
There are different approaches when it comes to hip replacement surgery, right,
so what was your approach for my surgery?
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Yeah, so that word approach, typically, like for us as surgeons,
means you know, putting simply how to get into the
area you're doing surgery, in this case the hip. So
how do we get there? There are a lot of
different ways. The method that I use is sometimes called antir,
sometimes called direct anterior, basically means going from the front
of the hip to get into the hip joint. There
(09:59):
were many kinds proponents of using that technique, like me,
I think do so for a few different reasons in
my opinion, and probably the thing that's the most well
established if you look at the published literature, is that
people who have the surgery done through that technique have
an easier early recovery.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
You mean from going in the front exactly.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
So while it still takes obviously a certain amount of
time to heal, the milestones that someone might reach during
that healing time happens faster through that antier approach. Boork
going through the front than it does through some other approaches,
despite the fact that the long term results of all
approaches is really good and probably comparable.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Yeah, I kind of like that you went through the
front and not the side. Honestly, you use robotic assistance
in surgeries, So why do you do that? And what
are you doing if a robot is doing the work,
what are you doing?
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Yeah, that's a super common question I get from people,
and I think some people have this image in their
minds of me having coffee in the break room while
the robot's doing the surgery, And obviously that's not what
it is. The best way to describe it as a
robot is a sophisticated tool or instrument that we use
to do the surgery that really helps us improve our
(11:24):
level of accuracy and precision. So it's not the kind
of robot where I'm sitting in a terminal and using
joysticks and controllers to move things. It's a robotic arm.
So every I'm there, you know, doing surgery, doing all
the steps. It's just certain steps of the surgery, particularly
(11:46):
taking measurements and kind of preparing the bone for the
implants and placing the implants. The tools that are used
to do that. I'm holding them, but so is a
robotic arm to ensure that we're doing that very accurately,
very precisely in the way that we want to do that.
If we don't have that kind of tool, we're usually
(12:08):
just left to kind of do it based upon visual
cues and landmarks and things that we reference. So this
is kind of an added advantage from that perspect That.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Is just bananas to me that a robot is inside
my body like that. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yeah, I was pretty impressed the first time I used
that technology. Didn't know what to expect. And after you know,
I've been using now for eight nine years, but after
doing it.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
The first couple of surgeries that way, I was blown away.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
So definitely became, you know, a big proponent of it
at that time.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Well, I guess it's great if it's going to you know,
make things more precise. Who don't want that? Yeah, So
when people talk about hip pain, there is sometimes a
misunderstanding about, you know, what the symptoms are and where
the pain is. What are the complaints that you see
and hear the most when people come into your office.
(13:03):
How do they identify it to you?
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (13:07):
I like the way you put it, I mean there's
there's this sort of thought that the hip is in
a place that the hip is not in. You know,
we kind of you know, if you ask most people
where's their hip, they're going to point to this area
that's kind of towards the outside or back of at
the top of their leg or you know, that area,
and the hip is closest to the front of the body.
(13:28):
So we tend to see the most frequent place that
the hip joints going to cause pain.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Really, you know, regardless of what the issue is, is.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
In the front of the hip, sometimes sometimes the groin
or just kind of to the front and so they
you know, maybe even slightly to the outside. You can
get pain on the side of the hip. It's actually
fairly rare to get pain in the back of the
hip or buttock area, but that front of the hip
most common, and it can oftentimes travel into the front
of the thigh to and even involve the neise sometimes.
(13:57):
But we'll get patients that come in and they you know,
first time you ever met them, and they say, my
hip flexer is killing me. And it's like, well, actually
it's not your hip flexer, it's your hip joint, so
that you know, those are the types of things we
hear most often, and it's totally understandable why it can
be confused.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Yeah, Yeah, that's where I thought I was feeling the pain,
and it's right in that same exact area as the
hip flexer.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Yeah, the hip flexer sits directly across the front of
the hip joint, so a hiplexer problem will probably cause
pain in the same area. So very easy to confuse them.
Even sometimes for us as physicians, they're difficult to distinguish
between the two. But yeah, totally understandable to get those
mixed up.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Are there certain genetics like family history that play into
this pain or having to have your joints replaced in
my case, nip.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
It's a huge component to this, and you know, you
mentioned before that oftentimes people may be surprised that, you know,
somebody like you has a hip problem like you have
and has you know, hip replacement. But genetics is a
big component. It's not quite as simple as well, my
you know, my mom or my dad or my aunt
had this, so I have it, so then my son
(15:10):
or daughter has it and so on and so forth.
It's probably more complicated genetic component to it, but but
very common, it's not. It's not always the you know,
person who has a history of just high impact or
you know, the overweight individual or things that people most
often think are always related to developing these kind of problems.
(15:30):
A lot of us just I guess you know, you'd
say in terms of genetics, sometimes bad luck.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Yeah, and like normal wear and tear. Yep, you've just
mentioned something that I wanted to ask you about. If
you are overweight or over your you know, like target weight,
does that contribute to the pain and the hips or
the joints breaking down quicker?
Speaker 3 (15:54):
That's a great question. You know, there's all kinds of
data out there. There's some data are associated with higher
rates of these kinds of procedures in patients whoever weiit.
But I don't know if I personally believe that that's
necessarily the biggest contributor to whether the joint breaks down quicker.
My personal feeling is it has a huge component or
(16:18):
effect on how the pain is felt. So the way
I described that to patients is on a bad hip
or knee, more force is going to be more pain, right,
And that's usually pretty easy to understand and I give
you know, certain examples for you know, or how that
force is felt. Flat level ground is oftentimes thought to
be about three to four times your body weight in
(16:41):
terms of walking on flat level ground.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Right pressure you're putting on your joints, you mean.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Yeah, so you know, for every pound, that's three or
four pounds of force, okay, whereas a sending descending stairs,
for instance, can be as much as ten times your
body weight. So it's just kind of like, you know,
the more weight you're carrying, the more magnified that gets.
And you know, I'm sure higher impact activities are going
(17:08):
to have you know, much more than ten x your
body weight. And so my personal feeling is I don't
know if it definitely is the biggest factor in how
quickly your joint wears out, but I do think that
as your joint is wearing out and becoming painful, it's
a huge factor on how bad your pain is. And
we definitely see that patients who lose weight will have
(17:30):
less pain, So that kind of fits with that.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Yeah, I know that over the course of like all
the years that I was experiencing pain before I came
to visit you, my weight fluctuated up and down, left
and right, and whenever I would be up even like
five pounds, my hips would hurt more. So that definitely
makes sense to me.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Yeah, I remember right before we went into the operating
room and you had a mask on. I didn't even
know what you look like. I mean, it was weird
like that we were in there the first day. I
feel like after the COVID lift and you could do
operations again. And I remember right before they wheeled me
and I said, hey, I've got that tattoo. Don't forget.
(18:12):
I need you to really line up my flower. I
have a really big For those out there that don't
know what I'm talking about, I have a really big
hip tattoo. I don't think i'd make that decision again,
but I asked you, can you please line up my
rose petal leaves? You looked at me so strangely. Is
that the first time you had anybody need you to
(18:34):
do that?
Speaker 3 (18:34):
No, definitely have had to come up before, both in
the knee and the hip.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
It's just one of those things.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
I mean, I feel like yours is definitely one of
the ones that that decision got into the tattoo.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
I mean, like right through it more than some.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Right, Yeah, I had one actually not too long ago,
where I was concerned about it and actually was able
to totally avoid it and looking at me like, don't
worry about it. Worry about my head. Of course, that's
what we're going to worry about. But yeah, I definitely
remember that, and I remember telling you that basically, we'll
do the best we can. We'll do you know, we'll
do the surgery and we'll do the best we can
with the incision. And yeah, fortunately I think it worked
(19:14):
out pretty well.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
So funny things people ask you to do, I'm sure.
Let's talk about recovery time after surgery like this on
my first one, when I had my first hip or place,
I was vacuuming my house three days after the surgery.
(19:40):
Is that frowned upon?
Speaker 2 (19:42):
It's a great question. I don't know if i'd say that.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
You know, I think I think every in many ways,
every person is different, right, And so you know, there's
a reason why when I do surgery, I meet a
patient or prep patient for surgery, we don't hand them
a list of here's what you do at what time,
because one thing three days after surgery is going to
(20:06):
be absolutely okay for someone to do and totally the
wrong thing.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
For someone else to do.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
So the best, the best advice I give patients when
they're recovering is everything you do should be on a gradual,
incremental basis, And people kind of get that if you
put it into perspective.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Most people are.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
You know, the best examples to use is like professional
athletes recovering from a sports injury. Most people kind of
see that where you know, if a you know, athlete
has an injury, they don't just after they're done healing,
like go back to playing full tilt. They work their
way up, they do certain things. You know, they do
this much and then this much and then this much,
and so, whether it's vacuuming three days or anything else,
(20:50):
I would just tell a patient, hey, like start with
a little bit, and then do a little more, and
then do a little bit more, and that way, if
you do reach a point where you've overdone it a
little bit, it won't have been by very much because
you have just previously done something that was totally well tolerated.
So that's great to hear that you were able to
do that. Some patients wouldn't be ready to do that
(21:10):
three days and that's okay. I've definitely seen plenty of
examples of patients were also young and healthy, take longer
to get there and then have great outcomes.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
So everyone's just a little bit different.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
I think I would advise against it personally because I
feel like I really did try to like just forget
that the surgery ever happened and just move forward. And
I tried to just like you know, grin and bear it,
and then that ended up I think making my recovery
a little more difficult on the first one. Although the
(21:42):
first hip recovery was very, very smooth, I just think
that I probably could have taken it a little easier.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
Yeah, we see that all the time, and sometimes, yeah,
I tell.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Patients, you know, break people up into like three groups.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
There's like the underachievers, the overachievers, and the people in
the middle. And probably the ones I worry about the
least are the ones in the middle.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
You know, like people might think it's.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
The overachievers, right, and maybe vacuuming at three days and
doing everything that you did it was a little bit
of that. But you know, the people in the middle
tend to smooth, you know, go smooth sailing through recovery,
whereas the others, you know, may need a little bit
of adjustment here and there based on you know, what
(22:26):
their activities are.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
What does a typical recovery look like with most of
your patients, Like how long? And you know those kind
of details. What do you say? Yeah, I mean it's
different for everyone.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
It's it is so different, and I hate to just
it's kind of like a cop out. I feel like,
almost amusing. But I generally tell visions this, and I
tend to be in this regard a little conservative because.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
I don't want to.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
I don't want pisions to go and just think, oh,
it's a big deal. So I generally tell people, you know,
there's about three months of tissue healing. The first month
of that is the main part of it, you know,
so when you get to end of a month, people
are film pretty good. Here are allows of you know,
of course, from the beginning, as you know what many
may not. You're allowed to put your weight on your
leg right away.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
You're allowed to walk right away.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
That's crazy to me. I did not expect that. You
guys like cut my hip off, basically saw my leg off.
I don't know why you did. In there, but I
was up like two hours later walking around on a walker.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
I mean, it's one of the things that we've learned
is just better for people. You know, if you go
back far enough, and I'm talking pretty far back, people
used to be in bed for days or weeks, you know,
after this surgery, and that's you know, this is a
long time ago. But there's not the right thing, you know,
I mean complication rates and we're much higher getting blood
cuts and other problems. So the surgery is definitely progressed.
(23:46):
You know, our materials have progressed, the techniques have progressed.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
So now.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Promoting that, you know, activity early is really good thing.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Well, for me, it was kind of like switching one
pain for another, like I switched the pain of the
hip herting what brought me to you for the pain
of the incision, and then especially the pain from I'll
never forget when I saw the X ray afterwards for
(24:19):
the first time and I saw what was in my
femur bone, like what you put like a metal spike
down pretty far into the femur bone. I mean it
felt really it looked really far to me. But for me,
just my body adjusting to having that in my bones
(24:41):
was really probably the most painful part for a while.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
Yeah, I think I think that happens, you know, oftentimes.
You know, one of the things is the way the
force is transmitted, you know, from your body weight changes
a little bit because it just goes through a different
sort of fashion than when when you have your native
hip in there. So there's adjustment period there, and there's
(25:08):
a period of time where you know, the bone has
to grow into the implant. So a lot of patients
will say what you said, which is I was pretty
quickly able to feel the difference in the symptoms I had,
And then there's some patients who they don't. It kind
of feels the same, and then they start recovering and
things just kind of start going away. But but yeah,
a lot of people do say that they can feel
(25:30):
that it's a different type of pain and soreness that
they have from surgery than when they had.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Yeah, it's all that tissue. It's all that tissue trying
to like reconnect to the new thing that's in there,
the foreign object. You know, are there things people can
do to prolong the life of a knee or hip.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
It's a great I mean, it's a very very good question.
I get asked that a lot. It depends on to me,
it really depends on how you look at that. I
don't know, like if you're just one of these people
who have, you know, genetically more likely to have your
joint wear out, I don't know how much there is
you can do. I mean there's certainly no proven you know, supplement.
I mean, there's a lot of things out there that
(26:10):
are getting looked at and theoretically it may help, but
there's nothing definitely proven that it's going to prevent that.
To me, the biggest thing I tell patients is going
back to that example I gave about force. The best
thing you can do is have less force on your joint.
There's really three ways to do that. Two of them
(26:31):
are more important than the third, of my opinion. Those
two are trying to maintain a lower weight because obviously
that makes sense lower weight, less force, like we talked
about before, And the other is building muscle strength, and
I think, without getting into a lot of detail, you know,
physics will show us that the stronger the muscles are
(26:53):
that cross the joint, the lower something called joint reactive forces,
which is a force that goes across the joint. So
I think that's really important, and especially for people as
they get older, that there's a lot of benefit to
focusing on muscle strength and you know, and some level
of strength training can really it's not going to preserve
(27:15):
your cartilage necessarily, but it may make your joints hurt less,
you know. And then that third thing I mentioned is
you know which activities you choose, you know, high versus
low impact, and not that that's not important, but if
you're just someone who lives to run, you know, and
that's just something you love to do, and mentally really
(27:36):
you know, beneficial for you. I'm not telling you not
to run if you know, if your body does well
with that. But yeah, for a lot of people, especially
if if you have a joint issue, cycling or swimming,
I mean those are going to be better tolerated because
they're lower impact on your joints.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Yeah. Yeah, I recently read a study that said that
bicycling can improve your knee joints. Is that true?
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (28:02):
I think, you know, I've heard, I've heard kind of
what you're referring to, and I think I think it's
kind of like what I just mentioned where it's a
really good way to exercise both cardiovascually as well as
you know, some form of a buscle strength too, in
a relatively low impact manner compared to some other things.
(28:24):
So you know, I think those things can all help you,
and particularly the strength training in terms of taking the
force off the knee or the hip. But I don't
know if it's like really preserving cartilage, although there's some
theories that joint motion is beneficial for cartilage health, but
I don't know we have that data to really say
that that's the case.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Sorry, I have so many questions for you. Is there
a type of patient that you usually see come into
your office more than others like athletes, danswers or is
it just regular old people like me?
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Oh, I would call you regular old people all kinds.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
I mean, really, yeah, I think that's I think it's
time's gone on, and then we've had success with the procedure,
and also people are active, you know, longer.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
We're seeing all sorts of people.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
I mean, I see everyone from hate to say it,
but it's not common, but I've seen people have the
surgery in their twenties and I've seen people in their nineties,
you know, so age can be all over and you know,
just it's not like I said, it's not always the
overweight patient. It's not always the marathon runner who's pounding
(29:34):
on their joints all the time. It's not always you know,
any particular person that can be. It could be really
you know, anybody.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Mm hmm. Let me ask you this. Does bone density
play a part in whether or not your joints are
going to last?
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Yeah? Not really.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
There there that super commonly asked or confused. And I
think the reason why is the word osteoporosis sounds a
lot like osteoarthritis.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
I was going to ask you about that. It's very confusing. Osteoporosis, Yeah, osteoarthritis.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
What is the osteoporosis refers to a bone density problem,
lower bone density, and it's a you know, you get
to a certain level of bone density below kind of
a lack of better description, what should be you have osteoporosis.
So that refers to lowering of your bone the density
(30:39):
of your bone mineral. So it's essentially, you know, like
your bones are sort of weaker. Common you know, more
common in people as the age, and in particular the
most common demographic would be, you know, older women because
of the hormonal changes that happen after metopause, so that
has a huge impact on your bone city not to
(31:01):
say that men can't get it or but but yeah,
and the classic would be like lower weight older women,
whereas usal earth rightis is a condition that refers to
wearing out or loss of cartilage and cartilage and bone
or totally separate tissues. Despite the fact that our articular cartilage,
(31:26):
which is the main type of cartilage we're talking about today,
sits on top of the bone and the joint. So
like in the hip, the ball, the bone has a
layer of articular cartilage and the socket has that layer too,
And the friction between two normal cartilage surfaces that are
(31:48):
lubricated by a normal joint fluid is incredibly low. But
that whole situation that we're out and do with the
bone density.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Yeah, I think you were the first person that told
me I had ast you arthritis. You said it so
gingerly too. You were like afraid to tell me I
think that I had arthritis, which I think was a
good decision because yeah, I was like, what, Yeah, I
don't know.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
I mean, it's I can't recall that a specificy. But
I would say sometimes people just don't like that term,
especially like when I'm saying a younger patient, because they
just kind of classically associate that with like an older
person's problem. So oftentimes, rather just say, hell, you've got
to do athritis, I just say, well, you're you know,
your cartilage is wearing out, and kind of explain the
(32:36):
condition more.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
Rather than just label yeah, yeah, yeah. Nobody wants to
hear that they've got arthritis, but most of us are
walking around with arthritis. I'm sure the number one question
that your patients ask you is, well, maybe not, but
how long are these hips going to last? Am I
going to have to get a hip replacement? On my
hip replacement?
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Yeah, that's a really good question, ues and it's a
common question, and we've talked about that, I think, but
the best way I can describe it, and a lot
of times I think we like we as a professional,
you know, surgeons, we don't do a good job with this. Like,
to be quite honest, it's easier for us to just say, oh,
twenty years, thirty years, but those are all guesses. And
(33:18):
so what I mean by that is materials have improved
a lot, and that's a great thing for you know, somebody,
especially like you, whos younger inactive and so what I
usually television is first answer is I don't know.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
How long it's going to last. But that's good. Here's
here's why.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
The reason I don't know is if you go back
to materials that were used, you know, probably over twenty
to twenty five years ago, that were the most commonly
used things, using very special techniques which I won't get
into the details of, we can detect the very first
tiny amount of wear starting even at year one after
(34:01):
now it's not something you would see on an X ray,
but again using a special technique that we mostly use
for research purposes, you could start detecting that.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
There's rare and tear my new hips.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
After all, I'm just saying these are I'm saying these are.
This is materials used back a long time ago, over
twenty twenty five years ago.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
Okay, got it.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
So in those cases you were seeing that very early
stage of starting of where and those hips would go
on to do well for quite a long time after that.
With more modern materials which started being used around the
year two thousand and became you know, within five years
(34:42):
of that really commonly used, and even since then there
have been some additional modifications and improvements. But if you
look at those and you look at the n VIVA,
which means in people data, using those same very special techniques,
we can't even detect that first little bit aware that
(35:03):
we used to detect that year one, and now we're
at over a year twenty.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
So that's good news.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
Okay, that's good news, very good news for everyone, particularly
you know, young active people like you.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Yeah, because you know, I got no interest in having
my hips replaced again. I mean, it wasn't the worst
thing ever, but yeah, I wouldn't. I wouldn't be like, Yay,
I'm getting my hips replaced again.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
Yeah, and you know it would never be the right
thing for somebody like me to television. Oh, you're never
going to need to have it done again. But you know,
because I can tell you, now, here's what the data
is that you're you know, in the early year twenty
twenty two whatever, But I don't know, it's Gonnapen year
thirty forty fifty. And you know, with the young patient,
we assume they.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Might live that much longer.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
So but it's very encouraging, like it certainly is possible,
or that you know, even a young person may go
their whole life without needing another surgery.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Well, you better stay in the business a lot longer,
because I don't plan on going to anybody else for
my next joint replacement.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Just you.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
I appreciate that, and I don't plan to go anywhere.
I love my job. I feel very lucky that I
get to do.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
What I do.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Oh, I love that. I'm so glad you love it.
Before I let you go, I would like to ask you,
in the name of this podcast, what was your last
I choose me moment? Give me a good one.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
I don't know how good it's going to be.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
It it sort of happened, it sort of hasn't happened yet.
But there's actually something I did today in preparation of
something that's gonna happen. But my kids go to a
they attend a school that has a different start date
than a lot of schools in the area. So it's
(36:45):
a little bit of a tradition where my wife and
my kids go to Disneyland at the end of the
summer during a weekday, and I'm like a little family day,
you know, spend together before going back to school. I
don't usually go. I'm very busy at work a lot.
Sometimes I think that maybe too much. But anyhow, my
(37:09):
little girl asked me if I was coming, and so
I decided to arrange my schedules so that I'd be
available to spend the day with them. So kind of,
you know, decided that that would be a good priority
for for me, you know, just to be able to
kind of spend the day with them during that time
(37:30):
rather than you know.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Do one more other thing.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
Okay, So in choosing to spend more quality time with
your family that is, and I choose me moment for
you because you've had to be absent because of your
line of work.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
Yeah, I mean well, and I think there's a lot
of times where a lot of these experiences I miss
And so basically I suppose I was kind of for
me choosing not to miss this one.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
I love that. That's very nice. Thank you, doctor Taberry
for joining us today.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
Absolutely, thank you.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
I hope we helped a lot of people today.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
You too.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
So yeah, I'm still on this journey, this hip journey.
I'm learning every day to accept it and to love
my body and to love my scars. Like you know,
it's kind of daunting to put on a bathing suit
(38:34):
to begin with, but it's also you know, showing my
scars to the world. If that's a real like sort
of head trip, and you really need to choose to
accept it and love your scars. And that's where I
am right now. I'm still recovering, and you know me,
I'm not stopping, So this is going to go well,
(38:57):
and I'm going to be full throttle, full steam ahead,
because that's just the way I am. But it felt
really good to share that with all of you. We're
such a united community and I love getting to open
up to all of you on this intimate level. And
thank you to doctor Taberry for coming on the podcast
and giving us all that amazing insight as we continue
(39:20):
to choose ourselves each week. I want to really try
something this week with you that I've implemented in my life.
When was the last time you spent time stretching. I
enjoy doing it. I do it every night. It's part
of my wind down routine before I go to bed.
Sometimes I do it in the middle of the day.
(39:41):
I have a mat, I put it out and I
just stretch my body and it feels so good to
get in those muscles and get in those joints and
create some space and get that blood flowing to places
where it's maybe cut off. So if you're a morning person,
you want to do it after you have your morning coffee.
(40:03):
Maybe you like to do it right before you go
to bed. Regardless of when you do it, this week,
I want to challenge you to try and get in
touch with your body and have some me time stretching.
It sounds so simple, but so many of us I
know aren't doing it. Give it a try this week
and see how you feel. I bet you are going
(40:26):
to feel great and you want to keep doing it.
Thanks for listening to I Choose Me. You can check
out all our social links, take a look at our
show notes, and follow us and rate us and review
us because they love it when you do that, and
I love hearing from you. Remember to use the hashtag
I Choose Me. I will be right here next week,
and I hope you will choose to be here too,
You're listening to I Choose Me with Jenny Garth. Hi, everyone,
welcome to I Choose Me. This podcast is all about
the choices we make and where they lead us. On
today's podcast, I want to tell you something, and most
people are pretty shocked when I tell them this. I've
(00:25):
had both my hips replaced. Yep. You know. I live
a very healthy life, and I think it shocks people
to hear that because I work out so hard. I
post my workouts. I'm all about healthy and active. But
I want to talk about the experience today because I'm
on the other side of it now, and maybe somebody
(00:49):
listening is going through this experience that I went through.
Maybe you're feeling pain, maybe you're ignoring it. Maybe you
know something's right, but you don't want to go to
the doctor, and maybe you're feeling really frustrated. I want
you to know that you are not alone. It was
(01:10):
early twenty twenty, right after the shutdown. I had been
dealing with hip problems, hip pain, hip clicking pretty much
all my life. I used to be a dancer and
I would stretch, and I would stretch through my hip
and it would kind of click and it didn't bother me.
(01:30):
It didn't hurt that much. It was just a little embarrassing.
And the click got louder and louder until it started
to become like a clunk, you know. It was my
hip joint would feel like it was like clunking into
position or clunking as I walked, and eventually it started
to basically give out from time to time whenever I
(01:53):
would put weight on it. So it was the winter
of twenty nineteen going into twenty twenty that my family
and I had gone on a ski trip we always
like to try to do every winter, and my hips
were hurting so badly that I couldn't ski with them.
I couldn't get on the lift, I couldn't get off
(02:14):
the lift, I could not go down the mountain. So
I had to just sort of sit that out, and
I was like, oh man, this sucks. I don't want
this life. I don't want to slow down. I'm too
young to have to worry about, you know, pain and
not be able to do things because I'm in pain, Like,
I need to go get this looked at once and
(02:36):
for all. So I went and I sought out a doctor,
a surgeon who specializes in hips, and I went to
see him, got my X rays, which led me to
getting an MRI, which led me to the diagnosis that
I needed to have my hip replaced. And I was
(02:58):
blown away because that's not what I was expecting to hear.
I don't know why, but I just felt like, Oh,
I'm too young for this. US kidding. Your hip replace
that's for old people. My parents are older, they had
hip replacements. That sounds like a big deal, and I'm
not sure I want to do that. So I sort
of sat with that news for a while and lived
(03:19):
with the pain a little bit more and came to
the place where I couldn't even take my dogs on
a walk or go like on a family walk around
the neighborhood. And I just didn't want to live like that.
You know, I have a younger husband and I'd like
to keep up with them. So I opted to go
in and get my left hip replaced. And I was
(03:41):
so afraid when I went in for that first operation,
I had no idea what was going to happen. I honestly,
every time the doctor would talk about what the procedure
was going to be, and you know, the recovery and
all those things, my brain just literally stopped listening and
didn't want to hear anything. So I went into that
(04:01):
operation saying, Okay, I don't know what you're about to
do to me, but do it good because this is
really important. And I came out and I was like, wait,
what has happened? And then I saw the X rays
of what they had done to me. And not until
after my surgery did I google what a hip replacement
surgery looks like, because I knew I would be too
(04:23):
scared and I would back out, but it was really
something that had to be done. So yeah, I learned
a lot about hips that spring, and I kept it
a secret from the world because I was a little
embarrassed and I didn't want people to have, you know,
that perception of me that I was getting old and
(04:46):
breaking down, and so really only my family knew, and
my mom and my best friends, and it was something
that I didn't want to share with anybody, So I
kept the recovery to myself. I didn't, you know, post
about it or talk about it to anyone, and I
slowly started to recover, and that's when I decided to
(05:08):
get in the best shape of my life. I decided
I'm not going to let this define me. So what,
I have a fake hip. It feels great. Sometimes I
forget that I even have it. And I just started
getting back into working out, gradually building up more and
more strength, and I think that's about the time that
I started sharing my workout videos with you guys. Those
(05:29):
first videos that I started sharing were post hip replacement,
but nobody knew. And then four years later, my right
hip started to give me problems started, that clicking started,
that clunking started, that giving out, and I knew what
I had to do. So I went back in to
(05:50):
the same surgeon, doctor Tiberry, and I said, let's do
the other one. And the other one was done. It
has been a slightly I expected it to be just
like the same recovery time. Frankly, very easy for me
personally because I was in good shape and I was
healthy and I'm young, so I expected it to be,
(06:14):
you know, a piece of cake. The second hip was
not as easy to heal. I'm only about five months
out from my second hip replacement. Having too feels kind
of like a different ballgame. But it is slowly healing,
and I have returned to the gym and I've built
(06:35):
up and I'm pretty much pretty much back to where
I was. I'm still working through the pain and still
working on, you know, my body, accepting what's going on
in there. But it's a decision that I am glad
that I made, and I just want to be able
(06:55):
to share that with the world. I want to be
able to talk about it and help people who might
be dealing with hit pain or any other joint pain,
and they might be so scared because it is a
very scary thing to go under the knife, you know,
And I just want to be able to sort of
destigmatize the concept that fake hips are only for old people.
(07:21):
That's not true. Everybody you know has their different reasons
and their different experiences with their bodies. So I just
want to share mine in hopes that it maybe could
help one of you listening. So today I want to
bring in the surgeon who did both of my hip replacements.
I'm very, very grateful to him. He is a board
(07:45):
certified orthopedic surgeon who specializes in hip any replacements. He
is my doctor and I like him a lot. Please
welcome doctor Taberry to the I Choose Me Podcast. Welcome, Welcome,
Thank you, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
This is a big moment for me. I mean, can
you believe it that I'm sharing this incredibly intimate story
with the world.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
It's a big deal.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
It's a big thing that people go through and everyone
kind of reacts to it differently.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
So yeah, thank for you.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
People you know, are shocked when I tell them when
they find out about this about my hips, the hips
that don't lie, they don't get it because I'm so
you know, I'm very healthy, I'm so active, I you know,
share my videos and hopes to inspire others and keep
myself going. So people are really shocked when they hear
(08:44):
about this, and I'm only fifty two. Is it common
to replace such a youngster's hips.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Well, I guess I would. You know, it would depend
on what you mean by common. I mean, to answer
the question directly, it's not that uncommon. The average age
for this procedure is still in the sixties, so it's
certainly below average age.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Is you know, most people.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
Might imagine hip arthritis and hip replacements in the fifties
is becoming pretty common or be pretty frequently done. And
you know, people like me see patients at your age
all the time.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
So ough I thought I was special.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Well, I didn't say you weren't special, but we definitely
see people your age pretty often.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
There are different approaches when it comes to hip replacement surgery, right,
so what was your approach for my surgery?
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Yeah, so that word approach, typically, like for us as surgeons,
means you know, putting simply how to get into the
area you're doing surgery, in this case the hip. So
how do we get there? There are a lot of
different ways. The method that I use is sometimes called antir,
sometimes called direct anterior, basically means going from the front
of the hip to get into the hip joint. There
(09:59):
were many kinds proponents of using that technique, like me,
I think do so for a few different reasons in
my opinion, and probably the thing that's the most well
established if you look at the published literature, is that
people who have the surgery done through that technique have
an easier early recovery.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
You mean from going in the front exactly.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
So while it still takes obviously a certain amount of
time to heal, the milestones that someone might reach during
that healing time happens faster through that antier approach. Boork
going through the front than it does through some other approaches,
despite the fact that the long term results of all
approaches is really good and probably comparable.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Yeah, I kind of like that you went through the
front and not the side. Honestly, you use robotic assistance
in surgeries, So why do you do that? And what
are you doing if a robot is doing the work,
what are you doing?
Speaker 3 (11:03):
Yeah, that's a super common question I get from people,
and I think some people have this image in their
minds of me having coffee in the break room while
the robot's doing the surgery, And obviously that's not what
it is. The best way to describe it as a
robot is a sophisticated tool or instrument that we use
to do the surgery that really helps us improve our
(11:24):
level of accuracy and precision. So it's not the kind
of robot where I'm sitting in a terminal and using
joysticks and controllers to move things. It's a robotic arm.
So every I'm there, you know, doing surgery, doing all
the steps. It's just certain steps of the surgery, particularly
(11:46):
taking measurements and kind of preparing the bone for the
implants and placing the implants. The tools that are used
to do that. I'm holding them, but so is a
robotic arm to ensure that we're doing that very accurately,
very precisely in the way that we want to do that.
If we don't have that kind of tool, we're usually
(12:08):
just left to kind of do it based upon visual
cues and landmarks and things that we reference. So this
is kind of an added advantage from that perspect That.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Is just bananas to me that a robot is inside
my body like that. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yeah, I was pretty impressed the first time I used
that technology. Didn't know what to expect. And after you know,
I've been using now for eight nine years, but after
doing it.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
The first couple of surgeries that way, I was blown away.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
So definitely became, you know, a big proponent of it
at that time.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Well, I guess it's great if it's going to you know,
make things more precise. Who don't want that? Yeah, So
when people talk about hip pain, there is sometimes a
misunderstanding about, you know, what the symptoms are and where
the pain is. What are the complaints that you see
and hear the most when people come into your office.
(13:03):
How do they identify it to you?
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (13:07):
I like the way you put it, I mean there's
there's this sort of thought that the hip is in
a place that the hip is not in. You know,
we kind of you know, if you ask most people
where's their hip, they're going to point to this area
that's kind of towards the outside or back of at
the top of their leg or you know, that area,
and the hip is closest to the front of the body.
(13:28):
So we tend to see the most frequent place that
the hip joints going to cause pain.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Really, you know, regardless of what the issue is, is.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
In the front of the hip, sometimes sometimes the groin
or just kind of to the front and so they
you know, maybe even slightly to the outside. You can
get pain on the side of the hip. It's actually
fairly rare to get pain in the back of the
hip or buttock area, but that front of the hip
most common, and it can oftentimes travel into the front
of the thigh to and even involve the neise sometimes.
(13:57):
But we'll get patients that come in and they you know,
first time you ever met them, and they say, my
hip flexer is killing me. And it's like, well, actually
it's not your hip flexer, it's your hip joint, so
that you know, those are the types of things we
hear most often, and it's totally understandable why it can
be confused.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Yeah, Yeah, that's where I thought I was feeling the pain,
and it's right in that same exact area as the
hip flexer.
Speaker 3 (14:20):
Yeah, the hip flexer sits directly across the front of
the hip joint, so a hiplexer problem will probably cause
pain in the same area. So very easy to confuse them.
Even sometimes for us as physicians, they're difficult to distinguish
between the two. But yeah, totally understandable to get those
mixed up.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Are there certain genetics like family history that play into
this pain or having to have your joints replaced in
my case, nip.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
It's a huge component to this, and you know, you
mentioned before that oftentimes people may be surprised that, you know,
somebody like you has a hip problem like you have
and has you know, hip replacement. But genetics is a
big component. It's not quite as simple as well, my
you know, my mom or my dad or my aunt
had this, so I have it, so then my son
(15:10):
or daughter has it and so on and so forth.
It's probably more complicated genetic component to it, but but
very common, it's not. It's not always the you know,
person who has a history of just high impact or
you know, the overweight individual or things that people most
often think are always related to developing these kind of problems.
(15:30):
A lot of us just I guess you know, you'd
say in terms of genetics, sometimes bad luck.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Yeah, and like normal wear and tear. Yep, you've just
mentioned something that I wanted to ask you about. If
you are overweight or over your you know, like target weight,
does that contribute to the pain and the hips or
the joints breaking down quicker?
Speaker 3 (15:54):
That's a great question. You know, there's all kinds of
data out there. There's some data are associated with higher
rates of these kinds of procedures in patients whoever weiit.
But I don't know if I personally believe that that's
necessarily the biggest contributor to whether the joint breaks down quicker.
My personal feeling is it has a huge component or
(16:18):
effect on how the pain is felt. So the way
I described that to patients is on a bad hip
or knee, more force is going to be more pain, right,
And that's usually pretty easy to understand and I give
you know, certain examples for you know, or how that
force is felt. Flat level ground is oftentimes thought to
be about three to four times your body weight in
(16:41):
terms of walking on flat level ground.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Right pressure you're putting on your joints, you mean.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Yeah, so you know, for every pound, that's three or
four pounds of force, okay, whereas a sending descending stairs,
for instance, can be as much as ten times your
body weight. So it's just kind of like, you know,
the more weight you're carrying, the more magnified that gets.
And you know, I'm sure higher impact activities are going
(17:08):
to have you know, much more than ten x your
body weight. And so my personal feeling is I don't
know if it definitely is the biggest factor in how
quickly your joint wears out, but I do think that
as your joint is wearing out and becoming painful, it's
a huge factor on how bad your pain is. And
we definitely see that patients who lose weight will have
(17:30):
less pain, So that kind of fits with that.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Yeah, I know that over the course of like all
the years that I was experiencing pain before I came
to visit you, my weight fluctuated up and down, left
and right, and whenever I would be up even like
five pounds, my hips would hurt more. So that definitely
makes sense to me.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Yeah, I remember right before we went into the operating
room and you had a mask on. I didn't even
know what you look like. I mean, it was weird
like that we were in there the first day. I
feel like after the COVID lift and you could do
operations again. And I remember right before they wheeled me
and I said, hey, I've got that tattoo. Don't forget.
(18:12):
I need you to really line up my flower. I
have a really big For those out there that don't
know what I'm talking about, I have a really big
hip tattoo. I don't think i'd make that decision again,
but I asked you, can you please line up my
rose petal leaves? You looked at me so strangely. Is
that the first time you had anybody need you to
(18:34):
do that?
Speaker 3 (18:34):
No, definitely have had to come up before, both in
the knee and the hip.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
It's just one of those things.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
I mean, I feel like yours is definitely one of
the ones that that decision got into the tattoo.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
I mean, like right through it more than some.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Right, Yeah, I had one actually not too long ago,
where I was concerned about it and actually was able
to totally avoid it and looking at me like, don't
worry about it. Worry about my head. Of course, that's
what we're going to worry about. But yeah, I definitely
remember that, and I remember telling you that basically, we'll
do the best we can. We'll do you know, we'll
do the surgery and we'll do the best we can
with the incision. And yeah, fortunately I think it worked
(19:14):
out pretty well.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
So funny things people ask you to do, I'm sure.
Let's talk about recovery time after surgery like this on
my first one, when I had my first hip or place,
I was vacuuming my house three days after the surgery.
(19:40):
Is that frowned upon?
Speaker 2 (19:42):
It's a great question. I don't know if i'd say that.
Speaker 3 (19:44):
You know, I think I think every in many ways,
every person is different, right, And so you know, there's
a reason why when I do surgery, I meet a
patient or prep patient for surgery, we don't hand them
a list of here's what you do at what time,
because one thing three days after surgery is going to
(20:06):
be absolutely okay for someone to do and totally the
wrong thing.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
For someone else to do.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
So the best, the best advice I give patients when
they're recovering is everything you do should be on a gradual,
incremental basis, And people kind of get that if you
put it into perspective.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Most people are.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
You know, the best examples to use is like professional
athletes recovering from a sports injury. Most people kind of
see that where you know, if a you know, athlete
has an injury, they don't just after they're done healing,
like go back to playing full tilt. They work their
way up, they do certain things. You know, they do
this much and then this much and then this much,
and so, whether it's vacuuming three days or anything else,
(20:50):
I would just tell a patient, hey, like start with
a little bit, and then do a little more, and
then do a little bit more, and that way, if
you do reach a point where you've overdone it a
little bit, it won't have been by very much because
you have just previously done something that was totally well tolerated.
So that's great to hear that you were able to
do that. Some patients wouldn't be ready to do that
(21:10):
three days and that's okay. I've definitely seen plenty of
examples of patients were also young and healthy, take longer
to get there and then have great outcomes.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
So everyone's just a little bit different.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
I think I would advise against it personally because I
feel like I really did try to like just forget
that the surgery ever happened and just move forward. And
I tried to just like you know, grin and bear it,
and then that ended up I think making my recovery
a little more difficult on the first one. Although the
(21:42):
first hip recovery was very, very smooth, I just think
that I probably could have taken it a little easier.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
Yeah, we see that all the time, and sometimes, yeah,
I tell.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Patients, you know, break people up into like three groups.
Speaker 3 (21:56):
There's like the underachievers, the overachievers, and the people in
the middle. And probably the ones I worry about the
least are the ones in the middle.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
You know, like people might think it's.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
The overachievers, right, and maybe vacuuming at three days and
doing everything that you did it was a little bit
of that. But you know, the people in the middle
tend to smooth, you know, go smooth sailing through recovery,
whereas the others, you know, may need a little bit
of adjustment here and there based on you know, what
(22:26):
their activities are.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
What does a typical recovery look like with most of
your patients, Like how long? And you know those kind
of details. What do you say? Yeah, I mean it's
different for everyone.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
It's it is so different, and I hate to just
it's kind of like a cop out. I feel like,
almost amusing. But I generally tell visions this, and I
tend to be in this regard a little conservative because.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
I don't want to.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
I don't want pisions to go and just think, oh,
it's a big deal. So I generally tell people, you know,
there's about three months of tissue healing. The first month
of that is the main part of it, you know,
so when you get to end of a month, people
are film pretty good. Here are allows of you know,
of course, from the beginning, as you know what many
may not. You're allowed to put your weight on your
leg right away.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
You're allowed to walk right away.
Speaker 1 (23:09):
That's crazy to me. I did not expect that. You
guys like cut my hip off, basically saw my leg off.
I don't know why you did. In there, but I
was up like two hours later walking around on a walker.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
I mean, it's one of the things that we've learned
is just better for people. You know, if you go
back far enough, and I'm talking pretty far back, people
used to be in bed for days or weeks, you know,
after this surgery, and that's you know, this is a
long time ago. But there's not the right thing, you know,
I mean complication rates and we're much higher getting blood
cuts and other problems. So the surgery is definitely progressed.
(23:46):
You know, our materials have progressed, the techniques have progressed.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
So now.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
Promoting that, you know, activity early is really good thing.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Well, for me, it was kind of like switching one
pain for another, like I switched the pain of the
hip herting what brought me to you for the pain
of the incision, and then especially the pain from I'll
never forget when I saw the X ray afterwards for
(24:19):
the first time and I saw what was in my
femur bone, like what you put like a metal spike
down pretty far into the femur bone. I mean it
felt really it looked really far to me. But for me,
just my body adjusting to having that in my bones
(24:41):
was really probably the most painful part for a while.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
Yeah, I think I think that happens, you know, oftentimes.
You know, one of the things is the way the
force is transmitted, you know, from your body weight changes
a little bit because it just goes through a different
sort of fashion than when when you have your native
hip in there. So there's adjustment period there, and there's
(25:08):
a period of time where you know, the bone has
to grow into the implant. So a lot of patients
will say what you said, which is I was pretty
quickly able to feel the difference in the symptoms I had,
And then there's some patients who they don't. It kind
of feels the same, and then they start recovering and
things just kind of start going away. But but yeah,
a lot of people do say that they can feel
(25:30):
that it's a different type of pain and soreness that
they have from surgery than when they had.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Yeah, it's all that tissue. It's all that tissue trying
to like reconnect to the new thing that's in there,
the foreign object. You know, are there things people can
do to prolong the life of a knee or hip.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
It's a great I mean, it's a very very good question.
I get asked that a lot. It depends on to me,
it really depends on how you look at that. I
don't know, like if you're just one of these people
who have, you know, genetically more likely to have your
joint wear out, I don't know how much there is
you can do. I mean there's certainly no proven you know, supplement.
I mean, there's a lot of things out there that
(26:10):
are getting looked at and theoretically it may help, but
there's nothing definitely proven that it's going to prevent that.
To me, the biggest thing I tell patients is going
back to that example I gave about force. The best
thing you can do is have less force on your joint.
There's really three ways to do that. Two of them
(26:31):
are more important than the third, of my opinion. Those
two are trying to maintain a lower weight because obviously
that makes sense lower weight, less force, like we talked
about before, And the other is building muscle strength, and
I think, without getting into a lot of detail, you know,
physics will show us that the stronger the muscles are
(26:53):
that cross the joint, the lower something called joint reactive forces,
which is a force that goes across the joint. So
I think that's really important, and especially for people as
they get older, that there's a lot of benefit to
focusing on muscle strength and you know, and some level
of strength training can really it's not going to preserve
(27:15):
your cartilage necessarily, but it may make your joints hurt less,
you know. And then that third thing I mentioned is
you know which activities you choose, you know, high versus
low impact, and not that that's not important, but if
you're just someone who lives to run, you know, and
that's just something you love to do, and mentally really
(27:36):
you know, beneficial for you. I'm not telling you not
to run if you know, if your body does well
with that. But yeah, for a lot of people, especially
if if you have a joint issue, cycling or swimming,
I mean those are going to be better tolerated because
they're lower impact on your joints.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Yeah. Yeah, I recently read a study that said that
bicycling can improve your knee joints. Is that true?
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (28:02):
I think, you know, I've heard, I've heard kind of
what you're referring to, and I think I think it's
kind of like what I just mentioned where it's a
really good way to exercise both cardiovascually as well as
you know, some form of a buscle strength too, in
a relatively low impact manner compared to some other things.
(28:24):
So you know, I think those things can all help you,
and particularly the strength training in terms of taking the
force off the knee or the hip. But I don't
know if it's like really preserving cartilage, although there's some
theories that joint motion is beneficial for cartilage health, but
I don't know we have that data to really say
that that's the case.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Sorry, I have so many questions for you. Is there
a type of patient that you usually see come into
your office more than others like athletes, danswers or is
it just regular old people like me?
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Oh, I would call you regular old people all kinds.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
I mean, really, yeah, I think that's I think it's
time's gone on, and then we've had success with the procedure,
and also people are active, you know, longer.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
We're seeing all sorts of people.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
I mean, I see everyone from hate to say it,
but it's not common, but I've seen people have the
surgery in their twenties and I've seen people in their nineties,
you know, so age can be all over and you know,
just it's not like I said, it's not always the
overweight patient. It's not always the marathon runner who's pounding
(29:34):
on their joints all the time. It's not always you know,
any particular person that can be. It could be really
you know, anybody.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
Mm hmm. Let me ask you this. Does bone density
play a part in whether or not your joints are
going to last?
Speaker 2 (29:58):
Yeah? Not really.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
There there that super commonly asked or confused. And I
think the reason why is the word osteoporosis sounds a
lot like osteoarthritis.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
I was going to ask you about that. It's very confusing. Osteoporosis, Yeah, osteoarthritis.
Speaker 3 (30:17):
What is the osteoporosis refers to a bone density problem,
lower bone density, and it's a you know, you get
to a certain level of bone density below kind of
a lack of better description, what should be you have osteoporosis.
So that refers to lowering of your bone the density
(30:39):
of your bone mineral. So it's essentially, you know, like
your bones are sort of weaker. Common you know, more
common in people as the age, and in particular the
most common demographic would be, you know, older women because
of the hormonal changes that happen after metopause, so that
has a huge impact on your bone city not to
(31:01):
say that men can't get it or but but yeah,
and the classic would be like lower weight older women,
whereas usal earth rightis is a condition that refers to
wearing out or loss of cartilage and cartilage and bone
or totally separate tissues. Despite the fact that our articular cartilage,
(31:26):
which is the main type of cartilage we're talking about today,
sits on top of the bone and the joint. So
like in the hip, the ball, the bone has a
layer of articular cartilage and the socket has that layer too,
And the friction between two normal cartilage surfaces that are
(31:48):
lubricated by a normal joint fluid is incredibly low. But
that whole situation that we're out and do with the
bone density.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Yeah, I think you were the first person that told
me I had ast you arthritis. You said it so
gingerly too. You were like afraid to tell me I
think that I had arthritis, which I think was a
good decision because yeah, I was like, what, Yeah, I
don't know.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
I mean, it's I can't recall that a specificy. But
I would say sometimes people just don't like that term,
especially like when I'm saying a younger patient, because they
just kind of classically associate that with like an older
person's problem. So oftentimes, rather just say, hell, you've got
to do athritis, I just say, well, you're you know,
your cartilage is wearing out, and kind of explain the
(32:36):
condition more.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
Rather than just label yeah, yeah, yeah. Nobody wants to
hear that they've got arthritis, but most of us are
walking around with arthritis. I'm sure the number one question
that your patients ask you is, well, maybe not, but
how long are these hips going to last? Am I
going to have to get a hip replacement? On my
hip replacement?
Speaker 3 (32:58):
Yeah, that's a really good question, ues and it's a
common question, and we've talked about that, I think, but
the best way I can describe it, and a lot
of times I think we like we as a professional,
you know, surgeons, we don't do a good job with this. Like,
to be quite honest, it's easier for us to just say, oh,
twenty years, thirty years, but those are all guesses. And
(33:18):
so what I mean by that is materials have improved
a lot, and that's a great thing for you know, somebody,
especially like you, whos younger inactive and so what I
usually television is first answer is I don't know.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
How long it's going to last. But that's good. Here's
here's why.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
The reason I don't know is if you go back
to materials that were used, you know, probably over twenty
to twenty five years ago, that were the most commonly
used things, using very special techniques which I won't get
into the details of, we can detect the very first
tiny amount of wear starting even at year one after
(34:01):
now it's not something you would see on an X ray,
but again using a special technique that we mostly use
for research purposes, you could start detecting that.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
There's rare and tear my new hips.
Speaker 2 (34:13):
After all, I'm just saying these are I'm saying these are.
This is materials used back a long time ago, over
twenty twenty five years ago.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
Okay, got it.
Speaker 3 (34:21):
So in those cases you were seeing that very early
stage of starting of where and those hips would go
on to do well for quite a long time after that.
With more modern materials which started being used around the
year two thousand and became you know, within five years
(34:42):
of that really commonly used, and even since then there
have been some additional modifications and improvements. But if you
look at those and you look at the n VIVA,
which means in people data, using those same very special techniques,
we can't even detect that first little bit aware that
(35:03):
we used to detect that year one, and now we're
at over a year twenty.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
So that's good news.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
Okay, that's good news, very good news for everyone, particularly
you know, young active people like you.
Speaker 1 (35:14):
Yeah, because you know, I got no interest in having
my hips replaced again. I mean, it wasn't the worst
thing ever, but yeah, I wouldn't. I wouldn't be like, Yay,
I'm getting my hips replaced again.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
Yeah, and you know it would never be the right
thing for somebody like me to television. Oh, you're never
going to need to have it done again. But you know,
because I can tell you, now, here's what the data
is that you're you know, in the early year twenty
twenty two whatever, But I don't know, it's Gonnapen year
thirty forty fifty. And you know, with the young patient,
we assume they.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
Might live that much longer.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
So but it's very encouraging, like it certainly is possible,
or that you know, even a young person may go
their whole life without needing another surgery.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
Well, you better stay in the business a lot longer,
because I don't plan on going to anybody else for
my next joint replacement.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
Just you.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
I appreciate that, and I don't plan to go anywhere.
I love my job. I feel very lucky that I
get to do.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
What I do.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Oh, I love that. I'm so glad you love it.
Before I let you go, I would like to ask you,
in the name of this podcast, what was your last
I choose me moment? Give me a good one.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
I don't know how good it's going to be.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
It it sort of happened, it sort of hasn't happened yet.
But there's actually something I did today in preparation of
something that's gonna happen. But my kids go to a
they attend a school that has a different start date
than a lot of schools in the area. So it's
(36:45):
a little bit of a tradition where my wife and
my kids go to Disneyland at the end of the
summer during a weekday, and I'm like a little family day,
you know, spend together before going back to school. I
don't usually go. I'm very busy at work a lot.
Sometimes I think that maybe too much. But anyhow, my
(37:09):
little girl asked me if I was coming, and so
I decided to arrange my schedules so that I'd be
available to spend the day with them. So kind of,
you know, decided that that would be a good priority
for for me, you know, just to be able to
kind of spend the day with them during that time
(37:30):
rather than you know.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
Do one more other thing.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
Okay, So in choosing to spend more quality time with
your family that is, and I choose me moment for
you because you've had to be absent because of your
line of work.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
Yeah, I mean well, and I think there's a lot
of times where a lot of these experiences I miss
And so basically I suppose I was kind of for
me choosing not to miss this one.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
I love that. That's very nice. Thank you, doctor Taberry
for joining us today.
Speaker 2 (38:06):
Absolutely, thank you.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
I hope we helped a lot of people today.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
You too.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
So yeah, I'm still on this journey, this hip journey.
I'm learning every day to accept it and to love
my body and to love my scars. Like you know,
it's kind of daunting to put on a bathing suit
(38:34):
to begin with, but it's also you know, showing my
scars to the world. If that's a real like sort
of head trip, and you really need to choose to
accept it and love your scars. And that's where I
am right now. I'm still recovering, and you know me,
I'm not stopping, So this is going to go well,
(38:57):
and I'm going to be full throttle, full steam ahead,
because that's just the way I am. But it felt
really good to share that with all of you. We're
such a united community and I love getting to open
up to all of you on this intimate level. And
thank you to doctor Taberry for coming on the podcast
and giving us all that amazing insight as we continue
(39:20):
to choose ourselves each week. I want to really try
something this week with you that I've implemented in my life.
When was the last time you spent time stretching. I
enjoy doing it. I do it every night. It's part
of my wind down routine before I go to bed.
Sometimes I do it in the middle of the day.
(39:41):
I have a mat, I put it out and I
just stretch my body and it feels so good to
get in those muscles and get in those joints and
create some space and get that blood flowing to places
where it's maybe cut off. So if you're a morning person,
you want to do it after you have your morning coffee.
(40:03):
Maybe you like to do it right before you go
to bed. Regardless of when you do it, this week,
I want to challenge you to try and get in
touch with your body and have some me time stretching.
It sounds so simple, but so many of us I
know aren't doing it. Give it a try this week
and see how you feel. I bet you are going
(40:26):
to feel great and you want to keep doing it.
Thanks for listening to I Choose Me. You can check
out all our social links, take a look at our
show notes, and follow us and rate us and review
us because they love it when you do that, and
I love hearing from you. Remember to use the hashtag
I Choose Me. I will be right here next week,
and I hope you will choose to be here too,
Host
Jennie Garth
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