"Nobody really knew what I was going through," says John, describing the debilitating pain he suffered after a semi-pro football career spent slamming his body full force into other players." Nobody understands when you’re young and you feel like you have an 'old man' disease. I felt like a complete loser."
For 15 years John put up with that pain, staying home from parties and relying on others at work. He was getting by on yoga breathing and borrowed pain pills.
Post-football, John’s life should have been perfect: His construction business was thriving, and he and his family had just moved into an eight-bedroom dream home in Atlanta. In reality, the arthritis he’d developed had worsened. After work, he’d park in his garage and just sit there mustering the strength to hurl himself out of his sports car and scoot up the stairs.
People think of arthritis as something that only affects older people, but the average age of people whose quality of life is compromised by this condition is younger than it used to be.
John
Finally, he decided that he needed help. "I'd been suffering and moping around for years, and I guess I didn’t want to accept what I needed," he says. "I finally decided to get it together."
After discouraging, rote conversations with local doctors in staid local clinics, John’s wife convinced him to meet with Jeffrey Zarin, MD, at Cedars-Sinai. The two decided to move forward with dual hip replacement in two robotic-assisted surgeries that would be spaced out enough to support John’s recovery.
"As soon as I woke up, I didn’t feel that pain anymore," John says. "It was almost surreal. That's all I had to do was a two-hour surgery, and just like that I was back." Two months after Zarin performed the second surgery to replace his right hip, John was healed.
“Part of the recovery is retraining your brain to think that things are stable and better, and the longer you’re disabled, the longer it can take for you to feel normal,” Zarin says.
Month by month, John says, he gingerly shed his limitations. Now at hot yoga, he can stretch his legs the length of the mat. He and his wife recently moved from Atlanta to Houston, where they spend weekends mountain biking and kayaking—low-impact activities endorsed by Zarin to keep joints conditioned. This year, John hopes his construction business, Mr. Handy, will take on even more projects now that he can do much of the work himself.
But the most life-affirming abilities are the everyday ones, John says, like tying his shoes and sitting comfortably in his truck—normal stuff he’s grateful to have back and eager to keep.
