MANAGING PAIN WITHOUT PILLS

During the summer of 2017, my dear friend Colin Hickey needed to undergo surgery. He had managed to tear the labrum of each hip (a cartilage ring around the hip socket), due to a combination of his active lifestyle of hiking, playing tennis, and dancing, plus a structural deformity. The surgeon needed to fix both sides, so he would operate on one side first and then do the other a couple of months later.

This sort of surgery is difficult to describe in terms of its “seriousness.” On the one hand, it’s minimally invasive. The surgeon is able to do the work with only very small incisions, so the outward appearance is of a fairly minor surgery. Once inside, however, he would have to repair the torn cartilage and carve down some excess bone to prevent the sort of friction that caused the tear in the first place. This explains why people who undergo this surgery have months of physical therapy and recovery, after weeks of extremely limited mobility.

After his first surgery, I visited Colin at his