To hip replace or not hip replace

My left leg is a couple of millimeters shorter than my right leg.

I did not know this until I was 61 years old.

And I only discovered it because I had woken up one morning when I was living in Melbourne, Australia and tried to stand up and had fallen over several times in significant pain, gone to a chiropractor who ‘demanded’ I have a full skeletal x-ray—and it was he who told me.

I was shocked. I had lived through 6 decades of life: been a provincial athlete at high school, played multiple sports as an adult including field hockey, tennis and volleyball at club and league level, and taken Physical Education as an optional practical subject for my initial teaching qualification in 1974— and I never knew that my legs were not the same length.

But that wasn’t the first time I had fallen over after waking and trying to stand up. The first event was in 2001 whilst I was studying for my master’s degree at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. I could not get to a doctor until the next day and was then referred for physiotherapy and, after a few weeks, felt fine again.

The second time I fell was some six years later when I was teaching at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. On this occasion, I underwent a slightly different treatment programme including both physiotherapy and acupuncture. Once again, within a short period, I was comfortably back on my feet.

But since 2001, I had started to experience some slight lower back pain and my ‘practitioners’ mentioned that this was likely an outcome of a lifetime’s worth of hard, physical impact through playing sport. The pain was more a discomfort, really, so I took no real notice of it. I occasionally took some over the counter painkillers, my 'favourite' being Nurofen whenever I knew I was going to engage in some physical activity like hiking.

Over the years, I slowly withdrew from a number of sporting activities and by 2016 I had also become aware that I could no longer do longer hikes which involved significant inclines or declines—so climbing Mount Everest was taken of my bucket list! Following that third major fall in Melbourne, Australia and the chiropractor’s diagnosis, he also told me that I was going to require a hip replacement as the bones in my pelvis (especially on the left side) were not only mis-aligned but were showing significant deterioration through osteoarthritis.

Thanks, but no thanks was my reply. That was not the response the chiro was expecting. He had treated me using a brand new therapy, The Cox Flexion-Distraction Technique. It was developed by Dr. James Cox and is a gentle, non-surgical chiropractic method using a special table to rhythmically flex, distract, and decompress the spine, reducing pain from conditions like disc herniations, stenosis, and sciatica by increasing disc height, opening nerve passages, and restoring motion. A chiropractor applies controlled "push, pull, pumping" motions while the patient lies on a segmented table, providing a slow, oscillating traction to relieve pressure on spinal nerves and discs.

After 8 treatments, I really felt as through my spine and pelvis had been ‘re-aligned’ and I could walk happily without any major discomfort.

Now, at 70 years old, I can no longer jog due to the pain mostly in my left knee (notice all the left ‘problems’ arising from my short left leg) so mountain hiking is out of the question and all I can really do is walk briskly on flat(-tish) surfaces.

And what about that prediction of a hip replacement? If I squint and peer into the distant future, I can see a hip peering back at me but I quickly close my eyes and open them - and the vision is gone!

Oh yes, the other piece of advice that the chiro gave me at the end of my treatment was to sleep with a small flattish cushion between my knees. To date, I have not 'fallen out of bed' again—so far, so good.