Welcome back to The Hip Replacement Podcast. It's great to be here. I seem to have been gone a long time. We're in the middle of the summer right now and I've done a lot of traveling already. It seems that when my kids get out of school for the summer, we just stack up all these trips to go on vacation or go visit family or just do something where we're on a plane or we're in a car for a long time. And honestly, over the last six, seven, eight weeks, I feel like I've been in a car driving or on a plane just sitting there for at least half my time. And that kind of stuff can take a toll on the body.
So today we're going to talk about traveling long after a hip replacement because it's been 12 years more than 12 years for one of my hips and more than 11 years for the other hips. And you would think at that point, oh, there's no issues with the hips. Everything's fine. The only thing you got to worry about with a hip replacement is the first week or two or maybe the first month or two. And that's not true. The hip replacement brings a whole lifetime of presence for hip replacement patients. And just one of these things is traveling and being kind of cooped up or not being able to move around for longer periods of time, even years after hip replacement patients. So today we're going to talk about traveling years after a hip replacement.
All right. And some of the traveling that we've done, I'm talking about long flights or long drives where you're just sitting there and you really can't do too much.
And one of the things that we did was we went to my family took a trip to Hawaii. So, we took a flight to Hawaii and it was about a 5 hour flight initially from or land from Florida to our connecting flight and then about another six or seven hour flight. So, that's a long time on the plane. 12 hours total maybe between sitting there and flying time and waiting to take off and waiting to get off the plane. So, that's a lot of time cooped up in a relatively smaller space. All right. And then once we got to the islands, we did a bunch of driving. And again, you're kind of just cooped up, sitting down, not as active as normal, which I'm not complaining. I loved going, but it takes a toll on the body.
And one of the things that I did on a plane because I thought this would be helpful was that I bought an inflatable seat cushion. you know, you kind of blow it up and you sit on that instead of maybe a relatively hard airline seat. Well, I tried it. You know, you blow it up is maybe an inch or two inches tall, thick, and you sit on it and apparently it's supposed to provide a softer or more comfortable seating situation. I didn't find that to be the case. I think I had a pretty good airline seat. It wasn't all worn out, but I have sat on bad airline seats before, and that probably would have helped to have one of those inflatable cushions, but I didn't have that issue this time. So, I didn't use it to sit on for very long because it wasn't that comfortable. But what I did do was that I put it behind my back. And having an air, like an inflatable cushion behind my back was like so comfortable. I never thought about doing that before because it put my body in a better position sitting in those uncomfortable airline chairs, if you could call them that. Because an airline chair kind of bends you over a little bit, kind of hunches your back. Whereas, when I had this inflatable seat cushion, my back was more aligned, my neck was more aligned. I felt way better with it behind my back. Plus, it provided more air circulation. So, I guess I was a little bit cooler and just more comfortable alltogether.
But the long airline flights definitely took a toll on me. Then the drives once we're on the island kind of took a toll. I had to be a little more active just to be just to feel a little bit more normal. And one of the things that I noticed over the last several weeks was that my hips are squeaking a lot more. a lot more than normal. Previously, they would squeak, I don't know, once a month or a couple times a year, not much, but since these trips over the last six, seven weeks, I've noticed that a couple times a week, they're squeaking or grinding. And I know why that is. It's because my h my hips and my muscles are compressed and I'm probably not drinking enough water because of all this travel to hydrate myself. So, my hips are compressed because of the tight muscles and I'm not as hydrated as I normally would be. Plus, it's summer. Maybe that's dehydrating me a little bit more. But, I think a lot of it has to do with the travel.
And not only were there flights, but when we got home from the Hawaii trip, and speaking of Hawaii, I saw lava for the first time, like liquid molting lava like shooting out of the ground. It was about a mile and a half away, but and it was shooting several hundred feet in the air. If you've never seen that, that's actually really cool. I mean, I'm not a geology person, but that was pretty neat to see. Anyway, I digress. When we got back from Hawaii a couple weeks later, we took a long drive from Florida to North Carolina to drop my daughter off at summer camp. And then two weeks later, we went back to get her. So that's about a nine 10 hour drive that I did weeks after these flights.
And all of these different times, all of these different occurrences of being cramped up and not moving really affected me. I kind of knew it was coming because I've had this in years past, but I felt like I needed to amp up or ramp up my activity level when I wasn't stuck in the airline seat or the car just so I could feel relatively normal, relatively active and free. And I could tell I was stiff because just walking around while I was on vacation or when I was back home, I was just stiff. My legs were stiff, my back was stiff. I felt it in my golf game and just everyday life and the squeaking hips like, "Hey, that's a signal that a little more stiff and a little more cramped than normal. So, let's pick this activity level back up and get back to where we need to be." So, that was my mentality.
So anyway, I'll talk about several tips and considerations for traveling years after a hip replacement.
Again, hip replacement issues come up for the rest of your life. I don't know if anyone's ever told you that, but they'll come up in one form or another, and maybe you don't attribute them to your hips, but they're there.
Okay. So, first things first after a long time sitting down on a plane or in a car, obviously stiff hip flexors, butt, the glute muscles, the hamstrings, and the lower back may all get tight. I had all of that stuff. And honestly, getting up from those on those first few steps felt a little awkward and uncomfortable. I wouldn't say I was out of balance, but I did feel like I was waking up from a deep sleep or a slumber. And it was just stiffness in the legs and in the back. And how I tried to combat that was periodic walking either on the plane, you know, just moving around the plane or in the car, like obviously stopping for gas or stopping to use a restroom somewhere or just getting out to walk. Those were all those are all very important. and position changes while you're sitting there, whether you're driving or sitting somewhere else in the car or sitting on a plane, just moving as much as you can are very helpful. I found that I must have been moving every five or 10 minutes on a plane, just kind of shifting my seat or moving my legs a little bit, just anything to get as much movement as I possibly could while on the plane.
Second tip or consideration that a blood clot is really a possibility. Okay, as we get older, our risk of blood clots goes up. So, we need to be cogn cognizant of that. I had a friend about 10 years ago, very active, and he developed a blood clot in his calf, and he was in the hospital for about a week. No one knew it was a blood clot. He lived with it for a week or so, and then he went to his doctor, and the doctor determined it was a blood clot immediately to the hospital. So, as we age, if you're having any pains and muscles that don't make sense and there sharp pains, check for blood clots. Anyway, if we're going to be traveling, a way to try to avoid or stem off a blood clot, obviously walking or movement. If you're kind of stuck in a place, you can't move too much, you can't get up, go for a walk, maybe flex those ankles. I mean, I think we should be doing this on planes and cars in cars or trains anyway. All right. Flexing the ankles, contracting the calf muscles, moving as much as we can, moving our legs. It's almost as if we're doing the rehab, the small rehab exercises that we got right after surgery just to keep our blood moving, keep our muscles a little bit active and to keep our blood moving. So move if you can, flex those ankles and contract the calf muscles as best you can. Another thing people can do is wear compression stockings as high as you can. Maybe just up to your ankles or over your calves or up to the knee if you can. And maybe even if you're going to go on a long flight and you have concerns about this, maybe talk to your doctor about getting some type of medication or maybe there's some medication you have around the house, your house that would make sense to help reduce the possibility of blood clots. Okay? So, talk to your doctor about that. let them know you're going to go on a long trip, flight, car ride, what have you.
Three, a lot of these seats, the seat position and the limited leg room can really be a factor sometimes if you're in a low car seat or if you're in a cramped airplane seat. The hip can really be almost immobilized or like locked in to a certain position for hours. And it may even cause someone to sit unevenly to put more pressure on one hip or one leg or rotate the leg or lean away from a hip which can put pressure on the other leg whether it's the muscles in your legs or in your hip or in your back. So, you could be doing some you could the way you're sitting because you're cramped up could be impacting what pain or discomfort or stiffness you have later on. So try to not put all of the pressure in the same place for a long period of time because even if the implant is fine, which it probably is, the position that you're sitting in can aggravate all those muscles in the f the hip flex the hip flexors, the glutes, the butt muscles, and the lower back and either hip.
So, when I'm on a plane, I try to move as much as I can, try to get up, move the legs, try to move my muscles as much as I can. Sometimes I'll just go stand in the back of the plane and chitchat with the flight attendants or other passengers or whatever just to not be sitting down the whole time. And then when I'm in a car, I can move around a little more. But, I mean, I don't know how big your car is. A lot of times the car the seats in a car are just the same size, just as big or maybe even smaller than the space you have in on a plane seat. Think about sitting in the backseat of a car. Do you really have more room than on a plane? I don't think so. Unless you have a big SUV. So just because you're not on a plane doesn't mean you're not going to experience some of these hip issues and stiffness if you're in that position or seated in that seat for a long period of time. So you're going to have to move to help reduce the stiffness. Okay.
And what about uh number four? What about swelling in the legs and the ankles? Have you ever had your socks on and you take your socks off and all of a sudden you see this big ring around your ankle or your calf because that's where your sock or your sock is compressed and you can tell where it's swollen. Well, we have to take care of that swelling in the legs and the ankles by with movement and hydration to get our blood flowing and possibly even elevating that leg after we get wherever we're going. Okay, once we get to our destination, maybe we can do a little bit more of healing, even if it's only five or 10 minutes. Maybe it's sitting down on a couch or sitting down on the floor and elevating your legs a little bit to help the blood flow a little bit more or doing some movement, going for a short walk.
Sometimes when I'm driving a long distance, and we certainly did this on these recent trips, we'll get out of the car at a rest station, a rest area, and walk around, walk around for 10 or 15 minutes. We'll even go into a big box store, use the restroom, walk around for 10 or 15 minutes, and then get back in the car. Sometimes the best rest stops are not traditional rest stops. So, if you're driving a long way on a highway, maybe that gas station isn't the best place to stop. Maybe there's a big store nearby that you can go walk around inside, be in the air conditioning, maybe do some quick shopping that you might need. Maybe a better idea than a quick in and out of a restroom in a gas station.
Okay, number five. And this one, this one's kind of near and dear to my heart because I have this issue every time we travel. And this has to do with lifting luggage and twisting in tight places.
My wife packs our luggage, okay? Not because I'm lazy, but because she doesn't like the way I pack and she's an excellent packer. When I see a suitcase, I see an opportunity just to throw stuff in there. When my wife sees a suitcase, she sees the opportunity of organizing this grand vision of putting everything we could possibly need for 5 years into the suitcase, even if we're only going somewhere for a week. And I can say these things because she's not here right now. But anyway, my wife is so good at packing that she will take up every possible molecule or space of air in that suitcase with something that we may never need or we may need. Who knows?
All right, but it's great. It looks perfect. It's well organized. But the problem is when you shut the suitcase, it is so heavy it's impractical. Now, when you go on a flight, you basically have about 50 pounds before you start racking up additional fees for that luggage. Well, there's been plenty of times where I cannot even pick the bag up after my wife has packed it. I don't know if it's 60, 80, 100 pounds, but we usually have to take a lot of stuff out so that number one, we don't get charged extra for the from the airline for a heavy bag and number two, so that we can physically move the bag from the bedroom where it's being packed into the car to leave the house in the first place. I hope my wife doesn't listen to this.
But anyway, she does a great job packing and I love her a lot, but the bag is really heavy and we have to be careful putting the bag into the car. And number two, if we're putting something in an overhead space in an airplane, that can get really heavy when you start lifting stuff over your head and you're trying to manipulate other bags and your bag into a place that might be small.
So when you're dealing with something heavy, even if you're normally comfortable moving such bag around, moving such weight around after you've been sitting for a while and you don't have the perfect place to move the bag because your footing is not in the right place. Imagine getting on an airplane and being in a tight place and you're trying to get a bag up into a compartment overhead or getting it down after the flight lands. You may be in a different position. Your body may be in a different position than what would be ideal to handle that kind of weight. So, we have to be very careful when lifting or moving heavy luggage because it's very easy for our minds to say, "I can move that. I can pick that piece of luggage up because that weight doesn't bother me." But then if you're twisted, if your hips are twisted or your legs are twisted, you can cause all kinds of strain around the muscles, straining the muscles of the hip and the back. And even sitting down in a car or the plane or the train for a long time, if you do any twisting maybe to reach something behind you and pick it up, that may cause an issue. My wife had an issue like that about 5 years ago where she picked up something behind her in the car and it caused a major hip issue for her. So, we have to be careful with sitting down for a long time and then trying to pick up something heavy that we normally otherwise would be able to do because we're in a different position after our bodies are in a different position, a different state after sitting for so long.
Plus, people may be tired or rushed or less prepared to be moving around.
Number six, after being so locked in or contained, that first walk after getting out may be a little difficult, maybe a little bit uneasy. So after I've been sitting in a plane or sitting in a car, I have some residual weakness and reduced flexibility. So, we have to be careful with walking around when we get up. The speed with which we're trying to move may not be the speed with which we can actually move. All right? Because I noticed that after sitting, I'm moving much slower. my muscles don't move like they used to and I'm having to think more about controlled steps instead of immediately jumping up jumping out of the car or jumping to run off the plane maybe to catch a connecting flight or to go get a rental car or to get to my destination. So, it's hard sometimes to be patient, but that may be the smarter move as our body works to re-engage the muscles appropriately so that we can move and do everything we need to do without hurting ourselves.
And think about, you know, when you leave a plane, it may be a long walk to get to where you're going, whether that's the rental car or some other transportation. So give yourself some time to get where you need to go. Some of these airports are absolutely huge. So give yourself some time to re-engage those muscles before you start going full speed down the hallway to get where you want to go.
Another thing that impacts us on a flight and maybe we don't think about this is that we may be eating a lot of garbage. Okay, just sitting there. We're out of our routine. We may be eating snacks we don't normally eat. We may not be eating anywhere of anywhere close to the normal food that we would eat. So our bodies may not be in the ideal state because we're simply not getting the nutrition, the right nutrition at the right time that we would normally get. Also, we may not be getting the hydration, the water that our body may need, which may lead to cramps or may lead to stiffness simply from not being hydrated.
Whenever I get on a plane, I have a water bottle. So, I fill it up at the airport, take it on the plane, or I buy a bottle of water if I have to. But I never get on a plane without water so that I can try to do my best to stay hydrated while on the plane. Same thing in with long car rides. I try to drink as much water as I need to so that I don't get dehydrated and I feel as normal as I possibly can.
Number eight, when we get to our destination, we should try to get on our regular schedule as best we can. All right? So, if we have certain amount of activity when we're at home, we should do the best we can to maintain that level of activity wherever we get to. Now, I know that's not always possible. Maybe you're even more active when you're on vacation or you're on a trip, which is fantastic. But once you get there, not only do we need to recover from our trip, but let's try to get back into some level of activity so that we can enjoy being there and help to remove any stiffness that we might have so that we can enjoy the rest of the trip.
I don't know about you, but when I go and stay in hotels, I do my best. It doesn't always work out. I do my best to get down to the gym. And a lot of times the gyms are modest. I'm not staying in the Taj Mahal of hotels that have big spas and exercise rooms most of the time. A lot of times I'm staying in pretty small hotels and they have a very small gym or workout area. And usually there's nobody in there because it's very hard to fit in a little workout, a little exercise while you're traveling. It's not fun either. I will tell you that it's not fun to take time and go work out or exercise or stretch for five or 10 minutes when you have other things to be doing on your trip, but it can make a huge difference. There's usually no one in there either. So, try to get some activity level while you're traveling and also when you reach your destination. walk, some type of exercise, anything so that your muscles get re-engaged and you could have enjoy the rest of your trip.
And also, don't forget about when you get back home, there's also some healing that should go on when you return home, when you get back into your regular routine and your muscles are recovering from your trip.
And that's what I'm doing now. I'm not only am I trying to do the same amount of exercise or stretching that I've done before, but I'm trying to ramp it up to recover from my trip, from all that time sitting in the plane or sitting in the car. And that just takes time. It's not something that happens in one day. It seems that it takes four, five, six days a week to just loosen up for some reason. lot of water, a little more activity, ramp it up just to get back to our level of activity so that we can start feeling normal or as good as we possibly can so that we can have great days at home and get ready for the next trip coming up.
I hope this was helpful. There's a lot of things to consider. Not really dangerous, but things to consider years after a hip replacement. And some of those things have to do with travel, being all cramped up and taking care of our bodies while we're traveling, when we get to our destination, and when we get back home.
In the next episode, we're going to talk about something that a travel related issue, and that is travel shortly after a hip replacement. So, this episode was travel years after a hip replacement, but what about travel in the first few days or weeks after a hip replacement? We'll talk about that in the next episode.
So, thanks so much for tuning into The Hip Replacement Podcast and until next time, I wish you the best recovery possible. Take care.
