I first skied when I was six, and loved it from the first day.  It was a rope tow at North Creek, NY, near my mom’s hometown.  By the second day I was taking the rope-tow and couldn’t understand why sometimes the rope felt SOOOO light in my hands, and other times it was almost too heavy to hold on.  But most important…every time I let go the rope at the “get-off” spot, I was on the way to FUN!   It’s been 64 years of fun, enjoyment, camaraderie, a bit of racing, good anxiety, wet, cold, enormous powder dumps, sleet. You know what I’m talking about, it’s the wonder of skiing and always having fun on the hills.

Except that the past season of 2024 wasn’t  great at all. It started out with the rainiest day I’ve ever skied in January.  I was in Vermont with old friends, and said I’d take their granddaughter up on the hill.  She had a great time, I taught her a basic wedge/snowplow, and we had fun all day long.  The only problem was the dull ache in my left hip.  It had been bothering me more often  during the previous twelve months.  In 2021, I’d seen an orthopedic specialist, who said, “Well, you don’t need surgery now, and maybe you never will, but there’s some erosion of cartilage in your left hip joint.”

The discomfort in my hip got a bit worse each of the past three years.  I tried PT but it didn’t work for this (the cartilage was going, going…and then pretty much gone by winter 2024).  By March 2024, with one decent hip and one goner hip, my annual spring trip to Snowbird & Alta was bittersweet.  Always love being out there, but I was skiing (in my mind) like an old guy, and I didn’t like it, cause I still didn’t feel “old”!  But I could only manage a decent turn to the left, and that just doesn’t cut it in the Wasatch!  In my mind I knew my future. So I did what I had to do. I got in touch with my “bone doctor”, or orthopedist.

Now, three years after first meeting my doctor, I understood why he’d originally said, “well, you may never need a hip replacement  at all”.  Everyone’s body works differently, and so whereas my cartilage was now gone (and to quote the goodfellas in Goodfellas: “and there wasn’t nothing we could do about it”), plenty of other guys and gals in my situation, with a similar period of “time passage”, might have more cartilage working for them in the joint, thereby lessening pain and immediate need for surgery.

My pain was constant, so I asked my doctor for some names of top surgeons. The first guy had done the surgery to replace a very good friend’s hip nine years ago, but now he wasn’t doing as many surgeries, being older.  So I called the next surgeon on my list.  There was something in his manner that exuded a quiet confidence in his surgical abilities (he specializes in hip and knee replacements).  I was already feeling really good about him, when he said, ”so you’re a skier”.  I told him I was, and had just returned from a Utah trip, but that my home mountain was Stratton in VT.  “That’s where I ski with my family every year”, he said.

Well, you guessed it.  I chose him.  It was important to me that he was an athlete, a regular skier, and we both loved the same mountain in Vermont.

X-Ray of John Gleb’s Hip

Three months later, in early July, I had the surgical procedure done in New York City.

My hip feels great, zero soreness from area of incision.  Walking average of 1.5 miles per day.  And because the cartilage had all but disappeared in my left hip joint, it had the result of shortening my left leg perhaps an 1/8 of an inch, which contributed to my irregular walking gait.  Now both legs are the same length again, (another beautiful consequence of the surgical procedure), and walking feels totally normal.  Am I happy?  You better believe it.  Did I wait too long?  No, I actually think I waited the right amount of time.

Moral of the story for me: Pain is a signal that something’s wrong, especially when it doesn’t go away, and acting on that signal has been such a great thing for me. Got questions?  Happy to reply.  I’m just a regular guy, not a doctor.  But pleased to be helpful in any non-medical way, personal perspective, etc.

Very thankful I did this.