Dont Bogart That Joint, My Friend, Replace It!

I got a bad joint. Four years ago I had an attack of bursitis in my left hip that would not go away.
One afternoon Terry dropped me off down by Powell's and I almost didn't make it home, it seemed like my leg was going to fall off, like there was a 16d nail right in the very joint of it, and I went slower and slower and limping more and more to that side, and what the fuck I finally crawled in the door two hours later. Yikes.

Check out the BLUE arrow, the right hip joint the ball is nice and uniformly round like a nice joint should be. The WHITE arrow however points to a real mess all divots and dents and pretty much chewed up magillicuddy. Guess which one I'm keeping.

Doctor Thayer the next day but he didn't know, and fucked around and another Dr poor Jim Thayer's partner Smith or Jones or whatever the fuck missed the diagnosis completely." Presents as Bursitis, pain interior, nothing helps, everything makes it worse. Does not respond to steroid injection. Device helps take weight off. " That, my friends is the classic presentation of AVN, Avascular Necrosis. Cute little Meg De Voe, second coolest MD in the whole civilized world, got it right away first time, blam, that sounds like AVN and we did Xrays and lo and behold, the inherently poor circulation of the Trochantor, the ball of the hip, results in the bone losing density and collapsing under the cartilage.
However that was three and a half years later. I spent a year leaning heavily on a cane until it sort of got better but did never heal actually remaining fucked up and painful and subject to weird twisting breakdowns and a sense of fucked-upedness that never went away. Finally I went to Meg to see if she could figure it out who sent me over to see Faye at the Phys Rehab joint up in Good Sam, little dark haired intense little cutie, I instantly had about a half a mad crush on her, anyway she took one look at the Xray and said, "Honey there's not much I can do that joint will have to be replaced, they don't even fuck around with that shit any more just cut and paste and good to go." Words to that effect.
Enter Dr Ballard down at Meridian Park.
October 21 is the date he's going to cut it off and put in a new trailer hitch and ball.
Until then I'm on long-term pain management which right now means a fuckton of Vicodin at regular intervals, which I like, but there will be consequences later on down the road.
But not right now.