Does My Total Hip Replacement Feel Good EVEryday??

What up champions!?

I get asked all the time whether my total hip replacement feels good all the time. My answer is a quick one: it's better today than it was yesterday, and it gets better EVEryday of my life. Mindset.

Which brings me to something that gets under my skin.

Don't get me wrong — I'm genuinely grateful for doctors, for their work ethic, and for the technology that gave me a hip replacement, took my pain away, and gave me a chance to play baseball again. But why do so many of them lead with "this will only last fifteen or twenty years, max"?

I'm not the type to accept that as the headline. Tell me the statistics, sure. But don't hand me a ceiling and expect me to build my life under it.

So tell me what's possible. Be like Dr. Michael Wilmink and tell me anything is possible. You can absolutely tell me the probabilities — just don't assume I've already been sorted into them. I'm interested in writing my own story.

The doctor who worded it right

When I was 19, Washington State University's medical staff told me my hip was in bad enough shape that it would eventually need replacing. It knocked me back hard. I'd worked my whole life for a full-ride scholarship, finally had it, and here was a complete curveball.

The message was essentially: you shouldn't play baseball anymore. And internally I was thinking, respectfully, absolutely not. I have come way too far for that.

Dr. Wilmink could see it in my eyes that I was going to attempt a comeback whether or not he endorsed it. He did suggest it might be in my best interest to consider stopping — but the way he worded it was encouraging rather than a flat no. That mattered more than he probably knows.

What I do with a statistic

When I was told my hip would last ten to fifteen years before I'd need a revision, I took it as a challenge. And honestly, thank God for that. That single sentence is a big part of what MADE me.

To be clear about what I'm not saying: I'm not claiming the statistics are wrong, and I'm not telling you that you'll never need a revision. Implants do get revised. If mine needs redoing in a year, in five, in twenty — I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. In the meantime I'm going to keep helping it get better EVEryday.

What I'm saying is that a population average was never a prediction about you specifically, and it shouldn't be the thing that decides what you attempt.

So does it actually feel good?

Yes. Like I said — better EVEryday. Mindset.

That doesn't mean I'm an idiot who does whatever he wants without regard for the fact that he has a total hip replacement. It means I've chosen this mindset regardless of how the hip feels on a given day, and I've chosen to do the work required to back it up.

So to the doctors: could you rephrase how you talk to us? Could you default to "anything is possible, and here are the statistics" rather than leading with the ceiling? Could you say "if you want to do the things you're describing, you'll need to be careful and work hard"?

I was lucky to have a doctor who gave me that. I was lucky to have my mom's full support. I'm lucky EVEryday of my life.

Do the work

If you want to feel good in your life, you have to work to feel good. If you think feeling good is supposed to be automatic, that's just foolish.

It's about EVEryday. About making adjustments. About lifting other people up and lifting yourself up, day after day. About improving your life however you can, every single day. About enjoying the process and being grateful for everything that comes — the positive and the negative. Everything.

On ego

None of this is written from ego. I'm not doing it to look cool or to act like doctors are dumb. They're very smart and what they say should not be taken lightly.

But the way you hear what they say shouldn't be taken lightly either. I simply want people to focus on what they can do rather than what they can't — with humility, and with an everyday awareness that if we don't put the work in, we won't be able to do much of anything.

I want to keep defying the odds and expanding my limitations. I want to be the most capable person I possibly can, because I love life and I know how short it is. We all impact each other more than we realize, and we should be adding value to ourselves, our community, and the champion pot of life. You don't need an ego for that. You need to lose it.

We're all in this together.

Cultivate your mindset.

Isaac