Hip replacement gets Spokane woman back in the game

Spokane resident Sheri Shaw, 55, has always been active. She played softball, volleyball and basketball in high school, and continued playing on recreational sports teams while in the Air Force.

Shaw plays golf about once a week, and three years ago she picked up tennis because one of her daughters started playing.

Then, last summer, she started experiencing hip pain.

“I thought it was from playing tennis,” Shaw recalls. “But I noticed I was stopping the full rotation of my golf swing.”

Despite having a high pain tolerance, she decided to take a month-long break from activities and do physical therapy to see if her hip felt better.

But it got worse.

Shaw extended her break from activities through the end of summer, until a tennis partner convinced her to play in a tournament.

“I played five matches in three days, then that’s all she wrote,” she says. “My quality of life tanked.”

She couldn’t go up and down stairs. She tried icing her hip, she took anti-inflammatory medications — anything to help it feel better — but nothing was working.

Shaw then saw a doctor who took X-rays that revealed her hip joint was bone on bone. There were bone spurs and cysts as well.

Shaw at Snoqualmie Falls

“It looked like my hip was fused — I couldn’t even tell where the hip socket was,” she says. “At this point, I was doing the one-step shuffle. I thought, ‘I can’t live like this.’”

That’s when she had a consult with Keenan Atwood, MD, at MultiCare Rockwood Valley Orthopedics & Sports Medicine, who said a hip replacement looked like the best option.

Shaw’s surgery — an outpatient procedure — was at the end of January.

“After the anesthesia wore off, that deep-seated pain I had been experiencing was gone,” she recalls. “They had me walking within a few hours — it was so heavenly, I wanted to run!”

Recovery went so well for her, she didn’t need to stay on pain medications.

“Sheri did very well postoperatively and healed great,” Dr. Atwood says. “She tolerated the surgery exceptionally and is a great example of what a total hip replacement can do for people.”

Only one week into physical therapy and she was where most people are at week six, says her physical therapist.

“Being able to go on walks again with my husband or girls is fantastic,” she says. “And Dr. Atwood said I can start playing tennis and golf again at the beginning of May.”