Despite his fear of surgery, a longtime mechanic chooses hip replacement to regain the life he loves.
INTERVIEW WITH
Richard S. Yoon, MD, FAOA, FAAOS, FIOTA
All his life, Glenn Carnevale has been a doer. A native of Livingston, he's owned and operated his service station, Carnevale's Gulf Service Center, in town for 47 years. Before that, he worked in gas station refurbishment.
"I love working on cars, but I was always in funny positions—leaning underneath them and bending over to attach them to the lift," he says. "At least 40 times a day, I was really putting my body through it."
Glenn realized the decades of long days standing, lifting, and crawling on concrete had caught up with him when he struggled to walk from the front office to the gas pumps just 20 feet away. "I was in so much pain, I could barely stand," he recalls of the pain in his right hip. "I used to park a car outside the office so I could rest on it on my way to the pump. Then I'd rest on the customer's car while pumping the gas."
Time to Do Something
Glenn headed to RWJBarnabas Health (RWJBH) for an evaluation of his hips and knees, which included a physical and imaging.
Richard S. Yoon, MD, FAOA, FAAOS, FIOTA, an orthopedic surgeon on staff at Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center (CBMC) and a member of RWJBH Medical Group, noticed how much pain and stiffness Glenn had, but more jarring were his X-rays. The images showed that Glenn's hip socket cartilage was completely deteriorated, and the hip joint was bone on bone.
Dr. Yoon explained his options: either anterior hip surgery, which allows for a fast recovery, or a combination of physical therapy, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and injections that would only help temporarily. "The total hip replacement was the ideal option for a pain-free life," Dr. Yoon says. Given Glenn's active lifestyle and motivation to get back to work, Dr. Yoon felt he was an ideal candidate.
Though Glenn was nervous about being operated on, he agreed to the surgery.
Better Than Expected
Because anterior hip replacement offers a fast recovery, it is Dr. Yoon's preferred approach for most of his patients who have a condition like Glenn's. It's often a same-day surgery, with patients discharged within hours of the operation, as the procedure is performed between muscle intervals and no muscle is cut. Dr. Yoon used this technique to replace Glenn's hip with a high-grade titanium alloy and plastic implant that lasts between 30 and 40 years.
The entire procedure at CBMC lasted less than two hours. Glenn remembers waking up to "a little discomfort, but nothing major." After he left the hospital, he went to his single-floor home on the Jersey Shore to recover. He took a few of the pain pills the hospital prescribed, but otherwise he relied on just Advil and Tylenol. RWJBH sent a physical therapist to his home twice a week for four weeks.
"I did great," Glenn says. He obeyed the simple guidelines given to him following surgery—don't turn out your operative leg for six weeks, and use a cane for as long as you feel unstable. After a month, he was able to return to Livingston, where he completed outpatient physical therapy three times a week.
Back in Action
Glenn was anxious to return to work, but Dr. Yoon was wary. "Most patients ask for three months off from work and go back sooner," he says. Glenn, however, was in the shop the day after his sutures were removed—just two weeks after the surgery. Though Glenn was already up and walking, Dr. Yoon was concerned about him being in a repair shop and infecting his healing surgical wound.
"Even though I was bandaged up real good, I was in an extremely dirty environment," Glenn says. To play things safe, he kept to office work for the first few weeks and waited a month to resume manual labor.
Glenn is now completely healed and back to living his life. Semiretired, he enjoys playing golf and goes to the gym for more than an hour at a time, alternating between cardio machines like the elliptical, stationary bike and treadmill. He also works at his shop a few days a week for fun—all with zero pain in his hip. "The surgery changed my life in every way," he says. "It made walking, sitting, living and working so much more comfortable and easier."
Dr. Yoon has loved watching Glenn get back to work—something that was a huge drive in overcoming his fear of surgery. "He's a pillar of his community," Dr. Yoon says. "Glenn helps so many people as a mechanic and has been doing it for years. When he was in pain, he wasn't able to do that, and I think that's when he knew he was finally ready for the surgery."
Learn More
For more information about orthopedic services at RWJBarnabas Health or to find a physician, visit www.rwjbh.org/ortho.
