Al Roker will have to watch his Today coworkers from his couch for the next two weeks as he recovers from hip replacement surgery.
The morning show host, 65, announced Tuesday that he decided to go through with the procedure after dealing with unrelenting hip pain for the last three months.
“All of a sudden, I started feeling this twinge in my hip — and then my back was acting up,” Roker told Today.com. “It seems like my hip went fairly quickly.”
Roker said that he will get hip resurfacing surgery — a newer type of hip replacement where surgeons trim the head of the thighbone and the damaged socket, and place a metal cap over the bone to help the bone move smoothly again — on Wednesday.
“My left hip has been deteriorating, and I decided, let me go get it taken care of,” he said.
Roker said that his recent trip to Greenland with NASA to study climate change in glaciers added to the pain.
“What I really needed was someone to carry me in a Baby Bjorn,” he said with a laugh. “That would’ve been just great.”
Roker said his sister Lisa is coincidentally also getting hip replacement surgery, and joked that “we’ve got a family plan going.”
And after correspondent Harry Smith asked if Roker has a discount card for all of his replacement surgeries — he also had his knee replaced in 2016 and emergency carpal tunnel surgery last fall — the weatherman said he’s “slowly replacing this body one by one.”
Roker said he expects to be back soon from the common surgery, and will document the process for Today.
“I hope, no complications, maybe by September 30th, so two Mondays from now,” he said.
Source: Read Full Article
