Beltane                                  Waning Flower Moon

Kate and I went into see Dr. Heller this morning in his offices at 7o1 25th St. next to the old St. Mary’s Hospital.  His P.A. came in with a small bag, about the size of a medium woman’s purse.  It was rectangular, had a zipper and was black.  He unzipped it and took out various pieces of metal and plastic.  In the correct combination these round and angular components will constitute a new hip for Kate on the right side.  He fitted them together explaining how they worked and the benefits of minimally invasive hip surgery.

Kate’s a candidate and has a procedure scheduled for June 30th.  We are both very happy.  In the traditional hip replacement surgery, about 98% of all of them, a the surgeon cuts a long slice along the hip down the thigh.  This goes through muscle.  It is the healing process for this injured muscle that creates a lot of the hassle post-op for hip replacements.  In minimally invasive they make two small incisions, 2 inches and 1.5 inches, and do the whole procedure through them, guided by x-ray.

These incisions go between muscles so there is no muscle healing required.  This means there are no restrictions–NO RESTRICTIONS–after going home.  The procedure takes an hour, two-three days in the hospital, then you walk out like the lame guy they lowered through the hole in the roof in the New Testament.  Only this procedure costs a lot more.

Dr. Heller looks to be late 40’s, early 50’s.  He’s fit, shaves his head and has a confident, upbeat manner.  He should.  He’s done 1020 of these operations and his recovery numbers in terms of negative sequelae are better than the national average.

This has a strangely ironic undertone for me since I spent the 80’s working with the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, the very one on which Heller’s office sits, first trying to stop Keith Heller from building 25,000 housing units there, then building neighborhood scale ones instead.