DIY gone awry

Like many of us across the country, Darryck used the pandemic as a good excuse to get some long-overdue DIY sorted. As a keen runner who kept himself fit and active, Darryck, in his late 40s, didn’t have any health worries. But when he suddenly felt an intense pain in his hip while working on his house, he realised that maybe it wasn’t just his household wiring that would require some attention.

“I had an active lifestyle, so I didn’t really think about my health much,” Darryck recalls. “I was up on a stepladder doing some DIY when I heard a crunch in my hip.”
Darryck was in immense pain. He usually wasn’t the person to visit the doctor, but this was something he realised would need attention, so he began asking around for recommendations. “I had a physio I’d seen for a knee problem who gave me two surgeons she knew.

Darryck had an appointment with the first of the two consultants recommended to him, but he decided that he’d rather just leave it. “I did not get the vibe that I wanted them doing my surgery,” Darryck says. 

Eventually, Darryck’s hip pain forced him to give up running. Wanting to stay active, Darryck threw himself into his golfing. He was managing to get by, but he was not as active as he had been, and his hip was affecting his flexibility. Even tying his shoelaces had become a problem, and he reverted to laceless shoes and an extended shoe horn.  After months of pain, Darryck decided enough was enough – if it was surgery he needed, it was surgery he’d get. 

A chance meeting

Darryck decided to book an appointment with the other surgeon he’d been recommended, Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon Mr Giles Stafford at The Wellington Hospital. Not only was Mr Stafford recommended by Darryck’s physiotherapist, but Darryck realised something else – he’d met Mr Stafford before. 

“Coincidently, I actually met Giles at the golf course,” Darryck explains. “He was introduced by my group of friends and I realised he was the other surgeon on my list.”  At his first appointment, Mr Stafford explained everything that Darryck needed to know about his hip replacement and its necessity. 

“Giles talked me through the operation, he looked at my X-rays, he explained the issues I had, he wondered how I’d been going so long on my bad hip!” Darryck recalls. “He gave me the comfort that surgery was the right thing to do.”

Darryck’s hip pain was caused by osteoarthritis and hip impingement. Hip impingement is a fairly common shape abnormality where the ball of the hip pinches up against the socket of the hip. If this is caught early, it can be treated with keyhole surgery. But like many people, Darryck hadn’t noticed it, and with his active lifestyle his hip had gone through a lot of stress, leading to his eventual injury. Wanting to minimise the impact of his surgery on his golfing schedule, Darryck booked his operation for December 2024. “I’d gone through my stubbornness and thinking that I could fight it and it would be manageable,” he says. “I’d made peace with the fact that I needed the operation.”

Christmas come early

The day of Darryck’s surgery at The Wellington Hospital rolled around – 17th December. With the detailed explanation of the surgery from Mr Stafford and the thought of finally getting back to pain-free movement, Darryck wasn’t feeling anxious about his operation. “I wanted to get it over and done with,” he says.

During the surgery, Mr Stafford removed the ball from the top of Darryck’s right femur (the large bone at the top of the leg), placed a titanium stem into the canal of the femur for new bone to grow around, and replaced the ball with a ceramic prosthetic. Mr Stafford then removed the damaged tissue from the socket of Darryck’s hip and put a new ceramic socket in its place.

Darryck was in and out of surgery in just an hour. With little pain or discomfort, he was up and mobile almost right away with the physiotherapy team getting him moving again on crutches. “The only issue was that I was trying to go too far on the crutches!” Darryck says. “I had no idea that I could be walking again with no pain so quickly.”

Enhanced Recovery Protocol

Darryck’s pain-free movement so soon after surgery was thanks to Mr Stafford’s Enhanced Recovery Protocol (ERP), which he uses for all his hip replacement patients. He’s developed this over the years, refining his techniques for the best outcomes for his patients. “Lots of the development comes from experience,” Mr Stafford says.

The ERP involves infiltrating the tissues around the hip with low doses of local anaesthetic and a mix of other drugs during surgery and for the following couple of days. This minimises pain after surgery without using strong painkillers, which can make patients feel dizzy or drowsy, letting them start physiotherapy as soon as they can.

This means Mr Stafford’s patients are able to walk up and down stairs independently and use an exercise bike the day of, or the day after their surgery. They’re also able to shower and dress themselves, which is something very important. “It sounds like a small thing,” Mr Stafford says, “but letting patients ‘wash the operation away’ and get back into their clothes helps them feel less like a patient and more like they’re on the road to recovery.”

Mr Stafford keeps his patients in for one to two days after their surgery, where they receive physiotherapy three times a day. “Patients have been shown how to walk up and down stairs, which is often a concern,” Mr Stafford explains. “When they leave they don’t feel anxious and they’re ready to go.”

A path to recovery

After a two-day stay at The Wellington Hospital, Darryck was back home. And five days after surgery, he was off crutches – just in time for Christmas.

To guide his recovery, Darryck had physiotherapy appointments and a recovery plan outlined by Mr Stafford and the physiotherapy team. This included exercises and stretches, as well as clear milestones. “Having this structure gave me something to work towards,” Darryck says. “It gave me points where I knew I could start to push myself a little more and it meant I knew when I was improving.”

After six weeks, Darryck was already feeling significantly better. He followed Mr Stafford’s recovery plan and took things slowly, and after three months he was back on the golf course. “Up until that point, I was still recovering the mobility I’d lost by fighting to push off the operation so long. But just over three months after my surgery, all my problems, even the tiny ones, suddenly just disappeared,” recalls Darryck.

Taking recovery in his stride

Today, Darryck still can’t believe how quickly he’s felt the benefits of his surgery. “It’s astonishing. My only regret was not doing it sooner!” exclaims Darryck. “I’m walking the dog, I’m cycling, I’m tying my shoelaces – everything is back to how it was.”

His next steps? Getting back to running, slowly but surely. If there’s one thing he’s learned to appreciate more, it’s listening to advice, whether that’s the advice from his body or from Mr Stafford.

“It’s not my hip that’s the problem, it’s my knees and joints after the year off,” Darryck explains. “I’m taking stock of how my legs are behaving, and I will keep building on that. But you’ve got to listen to your body – and Giles!”

Find out more about hip replacement surgery