Hip Hip
Clippy Story
In 1978 Joyce Adams was 58 and working as a bus conductor. One lunchtime as she jumped down from her bus to get a sandwich for her driver she fell and fractured her hip. This is called a fractured neck of femur (the femur is the long bone of the thigh). Treatment is an operation to remove the fractured end of the bone which forms part of the hip joint and replace it with an artificial hip joint.
Joyce walked around on her artificial hip for twenty years. It eventually started to become painful as its shaft worked loose where it was cemented into the femur. This necessitated a second operation to replace the artificial hip with a new one and this was performed in Southmead Hospital, Bristol.
Mrs. Adams is now walking around comfortably on her new hip and she gave us permission to use the old one in Hip Hip, permanently on display in the hospital’s out-patient department. Hip Hip enables patients awaiting a hip operation to see what an artificial joint looks like after twenty years of wear. This is contrasted with pills taken for arthritis which, apart from fractured hips is the main reason for patients to have a hip replacement. Patients are understandably very interested in the work as it directly relates to their own experience of illness.
1999