“I wish I had done it sooner,” says Ron, 61, a shuttle bus driver with Wake Forest University who says he lived in pain for years before two surgeries 13 months apart at Wake Forest Baptist Health Davie Medical Center changed his life.

“I kept telling myself, it’ll go away,” he says of the hip pain that forced him to give up bowling, cooking and other activities he enjoys. He even needed an additional step added to his bus so he could climb aboard for this work shifts. “I thought maybe it was just arthritis and I could deal with it, but it just kept steadily getting worse.”

He says he put up with the pain for about three years as his wife kept encouraging him to seek help from his primary care physician, Dr. Aimee Lischke with Wake Forest Baptist Health. In 2019, Dr. Lischke referred him to orthopaedic surgeon and joint specialist Dr. Maxwell Langfitt at Davie Medical Center. Dr. Langfitt told Ron that he would need total hip replacement surgery on both hip joints.

“I knew I had to do something,” Ron says.

In May 2019, Dr. Langfitt performed Ron’s right total hip replacement. It went so well that Ron wondered if he needed additional surgery.

“I went through therapy and thought maybe I could put off the second surgery,” he says. “The therapy team was excellent, but the more they worked with me on my right hip, I started to feel the pain coming in my left hip.”

Ron contacted Dr. Langfitt and got surgery scheduled for his left hip for June 2020. That surgery went even better than the first: Ron went home the same day.

“It’s amazing. It was like instant relief,” he says. “When I woke up, the surgical pain was nothing compared to the pain I had been dealing with. I’ve not had a minute’s problem. I can do just about anything I want. I can get down on the floor, work on something and get back up with no problem.”

Now free from hip pain, Ron says the canes he once used are stored in the closet, and he has discovered one lighthearted downside to his recovery.

“I used to be able to beg out of doing things around the house,” he says, “but my wife won’t let me get out of doing anything now!”