On Monday morning, September 15th, the phone rang. I had been waiting five days since the aspiration. Five days since that reddish-orange fluid left my body. Five days of wondering if the test would confirm what I had suspected for over a year.
It was Dr. Fehring himself on the line.
I braced, notebook ready, heart racing. He didn’t waste time. The fluid showed a low-grade infection. MRSA.
The Words That Landed
There’s a weight to hearing what you already know. For over a year, I had been dismissed, told repeatedly that there was no fluid, no infection. But my body had whispered otherwise. Now, finally, the test caught up to the truth.
“You have an active infection,” he said. “It’s MRSA.”
He explained the options. MRSA is stubborn — the infection clings to the prosthesis. A simple course of antibiotics won’t clear it. The standard approach is a two-stage revision: remove the implant, clean the hip, and place a temporary spacer. Then comes a course of high-dose antibiotics and a waiting period. If the infection clears, a new prosthesis is implanted. The alternative — trying to suppress it with antibiotics and ‘live with it’ — carries its own risks.
I scribbled notes as he spoke, but the words pressed heavier than ink could hold.
This was the test that finally named it. The test I had been requesting for over a year.
The Weight of a Name
For fourteen months I had lived in mystery. Was it nerve pain? Was it scar tissue? Was it all in my head? Every flare, every restless night, every failed explanation now had a name: MRSA.
Naming it was both validation and devastation. Validation, because I knew I wasn’t crazy. Devastation, because this wasn’t just inflammation or irritation. It was a deep infection, one that doesn’t simply go away.
What the Diagnosis Shifted
Oddly, there was a quiet relief in having an answer. I could stop arguing with myself. My body had been right all along.
But relief is not the same as comfort. The word “MRSA” carried with it a shadow of surgery, uncertainty, and the reality that my life had changed again. I had to reckon with the fact that I was now living with an infection inside my hip.
That evening, I sat with the heaviness. I thought about the thousands of small decisions — when to walk, when to rest, when to stretch — that now carried the echo of bacteria quietly living inside of me. Life had shifted, not in theory, but in fact.
The Edge of a New Chapter
The aspiration gave me movement. The diagnosis gave me truth.
This was no longer a story about a mystery hip. This was no longer me guessing in the dark. Now I was living with MRSA, and every choice from here forward would be filtered through that reality.
The fire had a name. And that, somehow, was the beginning of a new chapter.
Ukulele lessons with my nephew
Closing Reflection
The aspiration gave me movement. The diagnosis gave me truth. This was no longer a story about a mystery hip. Now I was living with MRSA, and every choice from here forward would be filtered through that reality.
Author’s Note
This essay is part of my ongoing series Living With Fire, where I share both polished reflections here on Substack and raw daily journals on my website.
• 📓 Walk with me day by day through this time → RAW Journal for Sept 15
• 🌐 Explore the Living With Fire archive → JoshuaGantt.com