Of hips, real and imagined…what am I to do?

If you follow the unexpected death of Prince, you probably know that he had been suffering with severe hip pain and had to turn to pain medicine to enable him to perform and get through his daily routines.  While it is still unclear whether or not his prescribed pain meds led to his death, I know what he went through.

I had my left hip replaced in 2006 after years of painful avoidance.  I am not a med person so I did not follow the accepted and expected pain control regimen.  This year, on April 1^st  [not an April Fool’s prank,] I had hip replacement surgery on my right hip. While I am doing okay as I follow a measured and conservative recovery routine, I did have access to narcotic pain relief.  I again elected to avoid those meds unless absolutely necessary... and necessity did prompt use a few times.

Linda González (photo provided)

Now, please do not infer anything about my approach versus Prince because I am not a legendary performer.  And we do not know what he really had to deal with.  More importantly, this lengthy introduction is meant to present the creative non-fiction work of Linda González. 





Her piece “My Mamy’s Left Hip” will grace the forthcoming spring 2016 issue of aaduna.  


Here is the opening excerpt:

My sister Susan called with a tinge of anxiety in her voice, a few days before my mom’s August visit to my home in Berkeley.  “Mom couldn’t get out of bed. Kaiser x-rayed her back, saw nothing; but concluded it was a pinched nerve. She got a cortisone shot. We have her in a wheelchair, as if things weren’t hard enough.”

Mom had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a year ago and that situation, coupled with her depression since my father died five years earlier, meant every visit was full of uncertainty. I sighed deeply and tried to picture my feisty mom in a wheelchair.

“I bet she’s scared. If it’s a pinched nerve I can take her to Lori. A chiropractic adjustment is better than cortisone!” I had been going to see Lori for eleven years, having met her on my first soccer team when I moved to the Bay Area.  I depended on her to realign me from the hazards of soccer games, car accidents, and child lifting. 

Continue reading this story with the launch of aaduna’s issue in mid-late May. Life may be really about how we deal with our hips...dunno! You decide.


Stay creative,

bill

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aaduna - a timeless exploration into words and images - is a globally read, multi-cultural, and diverse online literary and visual arts journal established in 2010.  Visit us at www.aaduna.org where we put measurable actions to our words.



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