Fred Good is a retired architect who once designed public schools and who now owns a school facility planning and financing business. He’s constantly on the move, traveling where his services are needed, and always finding a golf course along the way to play 18 holes.
At 60 years of age, he knew he had many healthy, joyful years ahead of him, especially once he could get rid of his painful hip.
“My left hip was the recipient of many years of twisting and torquing,” he explained. “In fact I probably tweaked it for the first time when I played football in high school. I had a lot of years to wreak havoc on that poor joint.”
In 2007, the years finally caught up to him and he found himself in absolute agony that was progressively getting worse. He went to an orthopedist and a near year-long journey for relief began. He went to physical therapy, he was diligent about exercise (“I’m the kind of guy who does 45 pushups when the doctor says to do 40”) but nothing seemed to help. His orthopedist took x-rays and decided that Good was suffering from a stress fracture that meant eight weeks of doing nothing, something Fred Good doesn’t do well. But he did, and still found no relief.
What Fred Good had was bone spurs on the end of his femur bone that ground into the hip joint every time he so much as moved, causing excruciating pain.
“Naturally, I continued to play golf,” Good said, “and when the spurs were exasperated by my golf swing, I started compensating. It just made everything worse.”
His salvation came when he happened upon an article about professional golfer Tom Watson.
Good: “He was describing my condition to a T. So I did some research and found out that Watson was going to have hip surgery in California and that his surgeon was Dr. Joel Matta. That was all the information I needed.”
Armed with his x-rays, Good made an appointment with Dr. Matta, a renowned orthopedic surgeon and co-founder of the Hip and Pelvis Institute at Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica. Matta took new x-rays and then explained Good’s condition. There was no cushioning material left inside Good’s hip; “no tread left on the tire.”
Good felt peace. He would finally have some relief from the pain.
Dr. Matta scheduled the procedure for December 2, 2008. Good would undergo a hip replacement utilizing titanium components placed during an anterior approach. This approach minimizes soft tissue disruption because a relatively small incision. It also enhances the accuracy of artificial hip components, minimizes the chance of complications and assists in a faster recovery. The least invasive method of hip replacement, the anterior approach also utilizes an arthroplasty table with unique positioning capabilities called the HANA table. Matta, a pioneer in hip replacement surgeries, is the inventor of this device that enables a surgeon to access the upper femur while minimizing muscle trauma.
“The anterior approach using the table is a slight departure from how many surgeons perform hip replacement surgery,” explained Matta. “This table allowed me to have Fred on his back during the surgery, rather than on his side, so that his skeletal position remained consistent. This allowed for more accurate positioning of the acetabular or hip socket component as well as assessment of leg length.”
Fred Good was at Saint John’s Health Center for two days and received wonderful care, by his own admission. The pre-op procedure was reassuring for him and he never had any sense of anything other than forward progress. For a man on the move, that’s ideal.
On his first day after surgery he walked with his physical therapist who informed Good that he’d set the record for the longest first day walk of any hip replacement patient. And when he left the hospital a day later, using only one crutch, he knew the road to full recovery stretched before him.
“It was phenomenal,” he said. “Three weeks after my surgery, I was running around at the holidays with all of the kids.”
By Spring of 2009, Good had also returned to golf, turning in games consistently in the low 70s. With a new hip, a challenging business, and with his wife at home and three adult children nearby, this new course of life is one he’s truly embracing.