“He can walk and work out, but my preference is that he not get buffed around by big waves,” said Vail, the chair of orthopedic surgery at the medical center. “This is a higher bar … because of the unpredictable and uncontrollable nature of what he does.”
Clark’s hip had been bothering him for more than three years before he decided to get it checked out. Surfing, snowboarding, swinging a golf club, even a stroll along Surfer’s Beach could aggravate the hip and cause excruciating pain, Clark says.
 On Tuesday morning in his El Granada home, Jeff Clark sits with his dog Pico, who is also healing from a leg wound and walks with a slight limp. |
Heeding the advice of friends, Clark underwent an examination earlier this year to find he had bone spurs in his hip, one of which had splintered off into his hip socket.
No stranger to surf-related injuries, the godfather of Mavericks has had surgery on his ankles and knees, and underwent a spinal fusion in 2002. The operation on April 28 left Clark grounded for at least a few months, but he’s kept busy by posting his steps toward recovery in a blog called “Rebuild Jeff Clark.”
In part, the blog is a way for fans to keep up on Clark’s recuperation. But it is also a platform for Clark to solicit donations to pay for the $60,000 surgery – his catastrophic health care plan doesn’t cover the costs.
“It’s been an eye-opener … What could be more catastrophic than not being able to walk?” he said.
In the first weeks of his recuperation, Clark says the hip responds best to literature and deskwork, but he’s been able to walk comfortably from his home in El Granada to the outer jetty at Pillar Point Harbor, so long as he uses a cane and packs his pain pills.
“Now, eight days out of surgery, I’m already walking more,” he said Thursday. “The joints, I can feel, are really smooth.”
Clark, who turned 52 in March, has made it his ultimate goal to ride Mavericks this winter – his 35th year on the massive waves. He imagines the hip operation to be a kind of time-traveling procedure.
“I’m so stoked. I’ll be such a better surfer than the last years of being so injured and hobbled … I’m gonna be 18 years old again,” he said.
Whatever the age, the numeral shouldn’t, and doesn’t, dictate the love or ability to surf, says Dr. Mark Renneker, a practitioner of family and community medicine at UCSF.
The stereotype of surfing being a passing phase for young people without professional aspirations is a fallacy, says Renneker, a friend of Clark’s who is himself known as being among the first generation of surfers to ride Mavericks.
“There are guys surfing big waves who are in their 70s. Guys are surfing full tilt who are in their 80s!” Renneker said. “It’s more of a bias to think that surfing is something just for the young in our society.” Renneker added that that he intends to ride waves well into his twilight years.
Movies, media and the surf-wear industry perpetuate the myths, Renneker added.
“Being a surfer through adulthood (myself), it’s not made clear to you that you can be a surfer for life,” Renneker said. “It’s been to my surprise every decade.”
Partially to satisfy his curiosity and partially in an attempt to dispel the myths, Renneker facilitated a study of middle-aged and senior surfers around the world in the 1980s. He founded the Surfers Medical Association in 1986, a group aimed at assessing the physiological impact of the sport on the aging human body.
The idea generated “a huge groundswell of interest,” Renneker said. He collected hundreds of accounts from older surfers around the world. After reviewing the data, Renneker concluded that surfing tends to wear down a person’s lower back, knees and shoulders – a result of all the paddling, popping, balancing and bending. Hip injuries, such as Clark’s “are very low on the list of surfing-related trauma or chronic injury patterns,” Renneker says.
“Guys who play intramural softball have worse injuries than I have,” he added.
Clark said he doesn’t recall a single traumatic event to pin the hip pain on. He did, coincidentally, play softball for 30 years, along with a host of other wear-and-tear activities including golf, carpentry and surfboard shaping.
“The body has been worked pretty hard,” Clark said. “But, yes, I’m going to surf ’til I die – that’s what it says on the back of my hat!”
To check up on Clark’s recovery, visit rebuildjeffclark.blogspot.com.
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