That's an amazing story,
@Baseball65! Well worth repeating multiple times!
But the words he said after seeing the x-rays and scans of my
hip have definitely stuck with me and reinforced my TMS thinking.
@Carma7, I have to say that as someone who grew up in Northern California, I was faintly horrified when I read your initial post describing the attack of the redwood tree (which I can only attribute to more climate stress) but I was impressed by your fortitude and what seems like an excellent recovery from that. You may be what I think of as a proactive self-healer, which is how I self-identify, and which I believe has everything to do with my almost immediate embrace of Dr Sarno's theories back in 2011, saving me from an aging-related crisis of symptoms when I turned 60.
In any case, we've seen sooo many people here with dire prognoses about their hips, I can't possibly count them. They arrive here with the same doubts that you're having, they do the work, and they stop thinking about surgery, hopefully for several decades. By the time you're 80, maybe it will be time, and that's fine. My family members who got new hips did so well after 80. Others lived into their 90s with no need.
For another story of a dire diagnosis and prognosis, look to Nicole Sachs LCSW and her Dx of life-limiting spondylolitheses when she was essentially disabled with back pain in college. Among many limitations, she was told that carrying children would be impossible with this condition. She saw Dr Sarno, recovered, and defied the prognosis many times over (including three kids) and eventually left her initial career in private psychotherapy to devote herself to spreading the word. Her new book tells her story and provides a framework for recovery. You can get a lot of information from her podcast,
The Cure for Chronic Pain with Nicole Sachs. It's on all the apps or on her website which is
https://www.yourbreakawake.com/ (BreakAwake)
The episode with her book launch is a really good introduction to her story, plus Christina Sarno was her guest, which is very cool (together they have created a practitioner training program):
https://www.yourbreakawake.com/podcasts/the-cure-for-chronic-pain-with-nicole-sachs-lcsw-2/episodes/2148977560 (S4 E6: LIVE FROM THE 92nd STREET Y - Dr. Sarno and the Book that Will Change Your Life)