Squeaky Hios Poem by gershon hepner

If, while making love, you hear
a squeaky noise it may not mean
that orgasm is very near,
but indicate the libertine
with whom you are cavorting has
an artificial hip that squeaks.
Unless you syncopate like jazz
or change your amatory techniques
you’ll have to learn to love the sound
that’s emanating from false joints,
and hope, before you hit the ground
you’re told that you have won on points.

Barnaby J. Feder (“That Must be Bob, I Hear His New Hip Squeaking, ” NYT, May 11,2008) writes about the problems created by squeaky artificial hips:
The first time John L. Johnson’s artificial hip squeaked, he was bending down to pick up a pine cone in his yard in Thomasville, Ga. Mr. Johnson looked up, expecting to find an animal nearby. Susan O’Toole, a nutritionist at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, who first squeaked going up stairs after getting home from her hip-replacement surgery in 2005, said she thought the banister she was gripping needed repair. And Edward Heary, an apprentice appraiser in Hatboro, Pa., said clients sometimes look with embarrassment or concern at their floorboards when he walks though their homes. As all three patients — and hundreds of others — discovered once they pinpointed the source of the noises, they had become guinea pigs in an unfolding medical mystery. Their artificial hips are made of ceramic materials that were promoted as being much more durable than older models. But for reasons not yet fully understood, their hips started to squeak, raising questions about whether the noises herald more serious malfunctions. “There is something amiss here, ” said Dr. Douglas E. Padgett, chief of adult reconstructive and joint replacement service at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York. More than 250,000 Americans get total hip implants each year, a procedure that generally costs close to $45,000. Hip replacements have a success rate of more than 90 percent, based on patients’ achieving relatively pain-free mobility after recovery periods that range from a few months to a year.

5/11/08