Mark's Story

Back On the Road Again: Cyclist Returns To His Active Lifestyle Following a Traumatic Injury That Led to Hip Replacement Surgery

Mark, a public relations executive based in Southern California admits to spending about as much time on his bike as he does in the boardroom.

“I do a lot of centuries, which is a bike ride of 100 miles or more,” said Mark. “I’m in my fifties, and I started cycling because a friend of mine told me that it was easier to stay in shape that way than lifting weights. After my first century, I was hooked.”

In March 2007, Mark and a close friend participated in the Solvang Century Ride, a loop ride rated “difficult” for its elevations and distance. At the 30-mile mark, his friend’s wheel swung out into Mark’s path and Mark went down hard on his right side.

“It was truly an uneventful accident. I landed hard and thought, ‘I hope I haven’t broken anything.’ I felt a searing pain in my knee and remember thinking, ‘Better my knee than my hip,’” he explained.

Despite the accident, Mark got back on his bike and finished the remaining 70 miles of the race. In the days following his accident, he hobbled around on his painful knee. Though an ugly bruise had blossomed from his knee to his hip, an x-ray of his knee didn’t reveal the source of the problem. Another week went by as the pain worsened and his mobility decreased.

“By this point my world had shrunk drastically and I couldn’t even lie down to sleep,” he said. The surgeon diagnosed a torn quadriceps muscle and scheduled surgery for April 9, 2007, just after Easter weekend.

But on Saturday, April 6, 2007, Mark was suffering unbearable pain. Later that day his wife took him—lying down in the back of the family station wagon—to the local emergency room. The staff set up a morphine drip to address the excruciating pain Mark was experiencing, and the next day they x-rayed his hip.

On Easter Sunday, a month following his accident, Mark learned the full extent of his injury: he had suffered a broken hip. Up until that point, both he and his doctors had difficulty diagnosing the source of his pain, due to the interwoven complexity of the nerves that are connected to the lower extremities. And because of the length of time that had passed since his traumatic injury, the hip would need to be replaced with a hip implant. “I lost it,” Mark admitted. “In my mind, I was completely unprepared for the diagnosis.”

As a fit and active man just in his fifties, Mark thought, “I can’t believe I need a hip replacement. There’s a whole emotional component I faced, wondering if I would ever return to being the person I used to be. I defined myself by my level of fitness, and I wondered, would I ever get back to that?”

Fortunately, once a diagnosis was finally made, Mark met with an orthopaedic surgeon. Within days, he underwent hip replacement surgery, receiving a Pinnacle^® Hip with TrueGlide™ technology, which is available only from DePuy Orthopaedics, Inc. Only Pinnacle Hips feature TrueGlide™ technology, allowing the body to create a thin film of lubrication between surfaces. This promotes a more fluid range of natural motion.

On April 13, one day post-surgery, Mark began to learn to walk with his new hip. “The hardest thing I ever did was to walk that day,” he said. But, triumphantly, he was back on his feet.

Mark used a walker for the first few days at home, and then graduated to crutches. A physical therapist recommended exercises and Mark pursued a regimen of therapy to regain his strength. One month post-surgery, his surgeon cleared him to go to the gym.

“I went that very same day and tried out the recumbent bike,” he said. “It hurt, but I did it.” Two weeks later he got on his own bike and he never looked back.

“If you had told me before surgery that my new Pinnacle hip would give me the natural, fluid motion I enjoyed before my accident, I wouldn’t have believed it. Now I can say that I’m living proof that you can feel younger and be active again following hip replacement surgery.”

On September 29, 2007, 5 months after receiving his DePuy Orthopaedics hip, Mark completed his first century ride. In October, he completed another. In the months since, he has continued to ride and look for ways to reassure other people who face joint replacement surgery that it doesn’t have to mean an end to their activities. He explained: “I’m not stoic or courageous. I’m like every other ‘weekend warrior’ with my bicycling. But I feel like I got my life back.”

The performance of a hip replacement depends on your age, weight, activity level and other factors. There are potential risks, and recovery takes time. People with conditions limiting rehabilitation should not have this surgery. Only an orthopaedic surgeon can tell if hip replacement is right for you.

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