Agile hip surgery?

I’m always looking for uses of agile in areas outside of software development.  This one is from my personal life.  I have struggled for the past 8+ years with chronic osteoarthritis of my left hip.  For a while it could be controlled with medication and the occasional corticosteroid inject (yes, I was ineligible for the Olympics!).  However, last your the condition degraded noticeably, and this year it became intolerable.  When the orthopedic surgeon first saw the x-rays he asked me how I was even able to walk!  Obviously it was time to finally discuss having a total hip replacement.

After doing a lot of research I found something called a Birmingham Hip Resurfacing as an alternative to a total hip replacement.  It is the same procedure Floyd Landis had done to his hip after winning the Tour de France a couple of years ago.  In my case it is the left hip.  As I sit and write this on Saturday, December 6, I can only count the days and hours until Tuesday, December 9, when I’ll have the procedure done!  I can’t wait to have a hip that will be pain free.  I know there is a lot of rehab involved, but at the end of the tunnel there is a pain free hip.  It will be so worth it.

But, that’s not very agile, right?  What is agile is the way the procedure is done.  Agile is about doing something, seeing if it was the right thing, and adjusting.  In my case, the surgeon intends to do a Birmingham Hip Resurfacing, but the head of my femur may be too diseased for that to be effective.  If that is the case, he will adjust (he’ll be agile!) and change to doing a total hip replacement.  I thought it was very interesting that there is an automatic backup plan based on what they find out.  Of course during the surgery they have to be even more agile to deal with potential issues like blood loss, size of the femoral head, size of the acetabulum, etc.  For those of you that want more details, Google it 😉

Anyway, it is now just a few days before I’ll have a couple of chunks of metal in my left hip.  I’ll obviously be taking significant time off after that occurs, but feel free to keep in touch.  I think my computer will be helping me keep my sanity while I recover!