Free Sick by Ben Holtzman Page A

basis on just how big you’ve gotten by means of names like “Tessa Monster” or “Pink Flamingo,” it’s harder than most. I tried to remain strong and not let it get to me, though.
    Several months after my second surgery, this time to take the metal pins out of my hip, I had begun growing. I was excited. Growing meant I was normal again.

    By the time I reached thirteen, I was 5-feet, 6-inches, had more curves than most 13 year old girls should and started dealing with typical body issues. The fact that I had a 9-inch scar on my hip with another 3-inch one above it stopped me from showing any sort of skin, especially in the summer. As far as I was concerned, bathing suits were an abomination.
    That year brought on another sore subject for me…literally. The leg in which I had surgery on was starting to pose a new problem: back pain. Because the leg’s growth is stunted during the healing process and my body continued to grow anyway, I had a leg shortening of about ½-inch difference in my right leg (my surgery leg).
    I tried orthopedic shoes at first, but the kids at school were relentless. They made me feel like a bigger freak than I already felt I was (although I’m sure the baggy, weird clothes and dark makeup didn’t help either). Finally, I decided to go with a discreet, small insole lift that went inside my shoe, the closest thing I could have to just wearing shoes normally.
    Sometimes I joked about it. Sometimes I
had
to joke about it. I’d call myselfGranny or Gimp on a weekly basis. My friends called it my “pimp walk.” I’d even contemplated getting a tattoo when I turned eighteen that said, “Limpin’ ain’t easy,” in hopes to make it easier to deal with.
    Every morning when I put my shoes on, however, I’d see it and it would remind me it’s not easy to deal with.

    Within the next couple years, I had seen my orthopedic doctor a handful of times with concerns about my joint pain.
    The first appointment, shortly after I turned eighteen, started out routine. Essentially, since he’s a pediatric orthopedist, I had one last hurrah appointment, giving me the clear to lead a normal life.
    However, things quickly went from “normal checkup” to “here’s how your life is going to pan out.” He told me that unlike the other patients in his case study, I was one of few who didn’t heal as desired. My hip joint was permanently misshapen which would cause pain throughout my life more so than his other Legg-Calvé-Perthes cases. Regardless of what I did, I would need a hip replacement by mid-life.
    To be entirely honest, I saw that coming. What I didn’t see coming was that he said any sort of job I wanted to do involving being on my feet would be out of the question unless I wanted to bump my replacement surgery up 10-20 years.
    I wanted to be a filmmaker. So, instead of being on my feet and behind the camera like I had originally planned, I took a different route and studied to be a screenwriter or video editor instead. That way, I could do what I wanted and extend the life of my natural hip.
    Of course, I hadn’t been that calm at first. No one ever takes bad news lightly. I thought it was the end of my reason for being at that point. But, as life goes, you learn to adapt and figure out ways to do what you need and/or want to do.
    With a massive weight gain and increase of joint pain under my belt, at age twenty I went to see Georgie (the nickname I gave my doctor as a kid) again.
    This time, I was a little more rocked. Now standing at 5-feet, 9-inches (or 5-feet, 8 ½-inches depending on which leg I’m standing on) and weighing 265 pounds, he told me that if I didn’t drop weight, I’d need a hip replacement by 30. Essentially, since my hip joint is two times as sensitive as a normal hip, with every step I take, two times my weight is stressed on my hip. That was over 400 pounds of