Two New Hips in My Forties Changed the Way I Think About Time

In 2026, at 43, I had both hips replaced within four months. The first surgery was on March 2. The second was on July 6.

This was not where I expected to find myself in my early forties—and it changed more than the way I move.

Before the surgeries, I thought about time mostly in terms of what I could fit into it. I was a workhorse, as my father would say.

Recovering after one of two hip replacements in 2026. Progress became something I measured in smaller ways: standing, walking, sleeping and completing an ordinary task with a little less difficulty than the day before. After two years in no pain, this is amazing no matter what the wins were.

I planned months in advance for almost everything in my life. My travel involved building schedules, organizing experiences, comparing flights and mapping complicated itineraries. If something mattered to me, was suggested by others, or discovered through research, I believed I could eventually make room for it—perhaps not today or this year, but somewhere in a future journey.

Time was always the thing I never had enough of between work, home and the things I cared about.

Then I started having pain in my right hip.

At first, I assumed it was connected to an old IT-band problem I had experienced about ten years earlier, when I was running regularly. But an MRI eventually revealed avascular necrosis in both hips—a loss of blood supply to the femoral heads that caused the bone tissue to die. Both hips would need to be replaced.

I hoped I could delay surgery for another five or ten years. During the holiday season before my trip, however, when my catering and events work was at its most demanding, I realized that waiting would not be possible. I hurt constantly, and the pain had become too much.

Only weeks later, I was leaving for a month of travel through Southeast Asia and Germany.

When I returned home in late winter 2025, I knew I could not continue indefinitely. I needed to determine when I could step away from work and give my body the attention it required.

With my catering calendar and existing commitments already in place, January 2026 became the first window I believed I could protect for surgery and recovery.

I planned for no travel, no events or parties—just me, recovery and new hips. January 2026 came and went without surgery. My first replacement had originally been planned for the middle of the month, but it did not happen until March 2. My second hip was replaced on July 6.

The time leading up to those surgeries was harder than I understood while I was living through it. Avascular necrosis was not a life-threatening diagnosis, but it was life-changing.

The pain and the slowness it demanded forced me to stop. It made me look at the direction of my life and ask questions I had managed to avoid while I was busy keeping everything moving.

What have I always wanted that is still missing?

What am I doing because it genuinely matters to me—and what am I doing simply because I have always done it?

The surgeries did not give me a sudden revelation that life is short. They did something quieter and, for me, more consequential: they made it harder to pretend that postponing a decision was neutral. Waiting is still a choice.

The Arc de Triomphe stands at the center of one of Paris’s busiest intersections. Before pain changed the way I moved, exploring a city often meant walking for hours without considering what I was asking of my body. I also had one of my most fun moments driving around this monument.

When the Body Changes the Plan

I had always understood that health could interrupt life. I simply did not expect mobility to become one of the central questions of my own life so early.

Travel had taught me to expect disruption. Weather changes. Flights are canceled. Trains are missed. A carefully planned day can fall apart before breakfast.

I was comfortable adapting to those interruptions because they were temporary. I could find another route, rearrange the itinerary or try again the next day.

It felt different when my own body was the part of the plan that could no longer be negotiated around.

Pain changes the way you experience distance. A staircase is no longer simply part of a building. A long airport connection becomes more than an inconvenience. On several recent trips, airport wheelchair assistance became something I was deeply grateful to have.

A hotel’s location matters differently when every additional block has a physical cost.

Eventually, movement itself becomes something you plan. I did not recognize how much of my life I had already begun organizing around pain.

That realization was especially difficult because independence had always been closely connected to how I understood myself.

As a teenager, I decided that I could not depend on anyone else and needed to focus on doing everything myself. Looking back, I know that belief was not entirely true. But it contributed to my success in leadership roles and helped shape the person I became.

I made myself into someone who could keep going.

People around me repeatedly said, “Stop. Slow down. You are doing too much.”

I disagreed. In some ways, I still do—but now I am moving at a very different pace than I did in the past.

I remember reading that Napoleon slept only four hours a night and deciding that if relentless productivity was possible, I could make it work too. I lived that philosophy for 20 or 25 years, influenced by stories about people who were celebrated for how much they accomplished.

For a long time, I mistook endurance for success.

Eventually, my body asked me to reconsider what “going” should look like.

Among the autumn vines of Champagne, I was still living at my former pace—building full days and trusting my body to keep up. I did not yet understand how much I took that freedom of movement for granted. Only a few more years would change that.

Recovery Made Progress Smaller

Travel often encourages us to think in large measurements: countries visited, miles flown, cities crossed and experiences accumulated.

Pain reduced those measurements to something much smaller.

Progress became standing, walking, bending, sleeping or completing an ordinary task with less difficulty than the week before. During my trip to Ecuador, things I once did without thinking had become extraordinarily difficult. I could not simply wander, explore and learn. I spent more of each day in my hotel than I ever had on a previous trip because I had to let my body rest and recover.

Now that both hips have been replaced and the pain is gone, my body is rebuilding its relationship with movement.

Recovery did not follow the clean timeline I wanted to give it. After my first surgery, I had a problem with the sutures. It was not life-threatening, but it added another six to eight weeks to the process.

It was during that extended recovery—not after everything had been neatly resolved—that I bought the tickets for the upcoming journey.

I could keep waiting for the perfect moment, or I could begin creating the life I had discussed for years.

I kept remembering two women from St. Louis and Minneapolis whom I met over dinner at Chez Georges in Paris. They told me not to wait—to do it and not allow anyone to hold me back.

That conversation happened ten years ago. I am finally taking their advice. Perhaps they will read this someday.

Sleeping Beauty Castle rises above the evening crowds at Disneyland Paris. As a Disney Park Fan Boy I, this is my favorite 'Magic Kingdom' park. The attention to detail and improvements over the last years have really made the experience even more heightened.

An Opening I Could Finally Recognize

For the first time in years, several parts of my life have collided to create an opening at the same moment.

My catering and events business is operating on a much lighter schedule while I recover. I work directly with clients and build a schedule that respects both their needs and mine. I am not currently sharing my life with a partner whose needs would also shape a decision like this. Most importantly, I have wanted to experience life overseas for years.

For the first time, I have the opportunity to approach that possibility as a lived experience rather than another trip.

I am not ready to abandon everything I know and declare that I am moving permanently. That would not be honest—or particularly wise for me.

But I can create an educated plan, give myself several months and see what an ordinary life somewhere else might reveal.

The surgeries did not create that dream. They created enough stillness for me to recognize how long I had been postponing it.

They also changed the way I weigh uncertainty against time.

There are still financial considerations, responsibilities to manage and practical questions about what living abroad might require. Two new hips may add complications of their own.

But the “right time” can become a comfortable place to store the life we are not yet willing to risk. It had been for me. 

Urgency and recklessness are not the same thing. I am not leaving without a plan. I am simply no longer expecting the plan to remove every uncertainty before I begin.

At Château de Brézé, sunlight crossed the courtyard behind me. Another amazing palace in the Loire Valley. I would love to revisit here when the gardens are in bloom.

Planning Around the Body I Have Now

My upcoming journey will begin on December 27 and continue for five months. It will take me through South Africa, Qatar, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, mainland China, Turkey and beyond. Some destinations will be new. Others will be places I am headed to with different questions and curiosity. 

The itinerary is ambitious, although perhaps not by the standards of my former pace.

More importantly, it has to be honest.

I cannot plan this journey around the body I had at 25 or the body I imagine I should have. I have to plan around the body I will actually bring with me.

I still find myself asking new practical questions: Will I be able to paraglide in South Africa? How much rest will I need after a demanding day? Which experiences are worth asking more of my body? What is to much?

That means thinking differently about airport connections, hotel locations, transportation, rest and the physical demands of a day.

It may mean taking a taxi when I once would have walked. I remember walking more than five miles back from an experience in Buenos Aires only a few years ago, simply because I preferred it to taking transit. It may mean leaving a museum before I have seen every gallery or choosing one meaningful experience instead of forcing three into the same afternoon.

Those decisions do not make the trip less successful. They are part of learning how to travel well now.

I still want full days. I still want museums, markets, unfamiliar neighborhoods, long meals and an itinerary that occasionally asks a lot of me.

But exhaustion is not proof that I used a day well. Seeing more does not always mean I experienced more.

The goal is not to prove what my new hips can endure. It is to use the mobility I have regained to pay closer attention to the world.

The western façade of Notre-Dame de Reims rewards the kind of close attention that requires time—and often a great deal of walking. Thinking about the fact this is where the kings of France were coronated.

More Than a List of Places

I am deeply grateful that both replacements are complete and that they have removed the pain that reshaped my daily life.

I am grateful for the medical professionals whose knowledge, care and support made it possible for me to move toward a life with greater mobility. I know access to that care is not universal. I am also grateful that years of hard work and long days have put me in a position where I can take this risk and discover what another kind of life might hold.

But gratitude does not require me to pretend the experience was easy.

These were my first surgeries. I felt fortunate to receive the care I needed, but I was also frightened. Recovery could feel hopeful, frightening and exhausting—sometimes within the same day.

For a long time, I treated mobility as something ordinary. Now it feels ordinary and extraordinary at once. I have to remind myself of that because it would be easy to return to my old habit of moving through life without appreciating what my body makes possible.

The upcoming journey is not a reward for recovering, and recovery did not give me permission to live differently. It removed my ability to keep pretending that postponement carried no cost.

I am choosing to explore questions that have followed me for years: Could I build a life somewhere else? What does home mean when it is no longer defined only by familiarity? Am I moving toward something, away from something or—as is often true—doing both?

Travel will not automatically answer those questions. But remaining where I am and continuing to postpone them will not answer them either. That is part of what I want Beyond the Return Ticket to become: a place for practical planning, personal experience and deeper questions about culture, history, food, people and home. The practical and personal parts cannot be separated.

The itinerary is not simply a list of places. It gives me time to visit a friend in South Africa, return to Thailand after being unwell during my 2025 visit and experience several new destinations.

Most importantly, it gives me enough time to live somewhere more locally than I ever could during a one-week trip.

Saint-Nicolas Church rises above the rooftops of Blois, with the Loire beyond it. Some of my strongest travel memories come from walking until a city reveals a perspective I could not have planned. My Loire Valley trip was my first alone and it really opened my mind to what I could experience over seas.

Time Is Something We Shape

Time is limited, but scarcity is only part of the story. Time is also something we shape through attention.

A hurried week or two can disappear almost completely from memory, while a single afternoon in an unfamiliar place can remain vivid for years. A meal, conversation or ordinary walk can change the way we understand a country—or ourselves.

Two new hips did not make me want to race through the world before another clock runs out.

They made me more deliberate about what I continue postponing and more attentive to what is happening while I am there.

I still believe in planning ahead. I still believe in preparing carefully and understanding as much as possible before I arrive.

I simply no longer believe that preparation must continue indefinitely before life can begin.

On December 27, I will leave with an itinerary, two new hips and more unanswered questions than certainty. For now, that feels like enough.

What is something you have been postponing because you assume there will be a better time—and what would it mean to begin before everything feels completely settled?