Reflection

Three weeks of travel, hospital visits, giving talks, socialising, eating. It has been a great experience. What have we learnt? Americans like cementless, tapered stems, x-linked poly, tantalum revision cups & melted cheese in all their food. They do their hips through a variety of approaches & disagree as strongly as we do about which is the best. Many, but not all, perform mini-incision approaches. This doesn’t happen so much in Canada where healthcare is not market-driven. There is a message there somewhere. Resurfacing is becoming more popular but the old hands are letting the young guys take it on – too old to change or too wise to jump in? Ceramic is not popular because of squeaking.

We have become experts in negotiating airports, know the cheapest, if not safest way to get from airport to hospital in many major cities.

We have met some of the most famous names in orthopaedics over the last 30 years.

The hosts were all unbelievably generous with their time, putting us up in some really nice hotels, allowing us to hack divots in their golf courses & tolerating our explanations of why cricket is better than baseball.

Karen Andersen of the Hip Society did a great job arranging our travel as did Bill Hozack with the itinerary. Steve MacDonald, Joe McCarthy, Doug Padgett, Bill Hozack, Wayne Paprosky, Don Garbuz, Tom Schmalzried & Bill Maloney made our Fellowship a once in a lifetime experience & we are very, very grateful.

Mukesh has been a pleasure to travel with. We have had a load of laughs along the way & kept each other going with cricketing & orthopaedic anecdotes all across the USA & Canada. We must thank our wives & children who have had to cope without us for 3 weeks without ever making us feel in any way guilty about our absence. Thank you Sarah & Deepika.

I hope this blog hasn’t been too dull & that someone other than my secretary (who had no choice) has found it interesting.

Jim Wimhurst. LAX Airport 22/09/07

Hip Society, Pasadena

21/09/07 – 22/09/07

Returning to the car park that is Los Angeles after a delay at San Francisco airport, we were delighted to find that the venue for the Hip Society meeting was in a very nice hotel in leafy Pasadena.

Having arrived too late to get to the reception at Larry Dorr’s, we took the opportunity to have a relatively healthy dinner, not involving steak or cheese. Unfortunately the “traditional” French onion soup contained more cheese than soup or onion.

The meeting itself was excellent. It was fantastic to hear surgeons such as Drs Harris, Ranawat, Paprosky, Engh, Dorr, Bourne, Duncan, Berry & Callaghan talk, & put faces to such famous names. Even better when they disagreed.

Having received the program on arrival, we were only slightly surprised to find “Travelling Fellows Report” on the agenda for 5pm on the first day. After a quick download of photos from our cameras & plagiarism of our other talks, we managed to put together an acceptable presentation which we spent the following day rehearsing during interludes. Come 5pm we were ready…. And treated to a report of the 2006 American Travelling Fellows trip to the UK! Remarkably similar to what we had prepared but with Old Trafford substituted for Shea Stadium & Haggis for Cheese Steaks. Still, it helps to be prepared for next year’s BHS.

The guest speaker at the dinner was a famous sports commentator whose great love was college (American) football.  Needless to say much of his talk was lost on us. We must get Aggers or Blowers for the BOA so we can return the favour for the American travelling fellows next year.