It took Albee Layer four months to recover from a hip surgery doctors told him he’d need six for. But typically, when doctors tell a patient “You’ll need X months to recover…,” they’re giving Average Joe a timeframe before he’s up for that commute to his desk job and maybe the bi-weekly trip to the gym. Albee’s four-month recovery brought us…well, Albee Layer.
Layer went under the needle on April 8 — his second of two hip surgeries. On April 9 he started the rehabilitation process. Two and a half months later, he was in Carlsbad with a single fin under his arm. And just over three months into the hellish nightmare that is recovering from a surgery, he was back on Maui hucking that surgically-repaired hip around. That in itself is uplifting and would have been a fitting enough end to “Two Hip to Quit,” the short chronicling his recovery. Layer gets out of the water, looks at the camera, and flexes — a victory pose. But at that point, it wasn’t Albee Layer at Albee Layer’s best.
Fast forward to Day 110 post-op. That’s the Albee we know. In less than four months, Layer might have completed one of the most impressive comebacks in recent memory.
