Britain’s oldest person has spoken about setting a new world record by having a hip replacement at the age of 112.
Gladys Hooper had the operation after breaking her hip last week. “I went to get out of bed and my right leg collapsed and I couldn’t get up again,” she told the BBC.
Hooper is recovering at St Mary’s hospital in Newport, Isle of Wight, after the operation last Friday. Asked what it felt like to be oldest person in the world to have a new hip, she laughed and said: “That’s something isn’t it. I’m surprised.”
She also told the BBC that her new hip “seems better than it did yesterday”, but added: “I don’t feel any different to what I’ve always felt.” Asked how old she felt, Hooper said: “I would say somewhere around 80.”
Her son, Derek Hermiston, 84, said the operation had given his mother a “new lease of life”, and doctors had been “courageous … to operate on someone of that age, but the operation went splendidly”.
Jason Millington, the surgeon who carried out the operation, said: “My philosophy is someone is never too old to operate, just too unwell, and in Mrs Hooper’s case she was certainly well enough.”
Asked whether she was still enjoying life, Hooper, who is from Ryde, Isle of Wight, said: “I don’t do anything, but I enjoy hearing things.”
Guinness World Records currently lists John Randall as the oldest person to have a total hip replacement, at the age of 102 years, three months and 30 days, at Pinderfields hospital in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, in November 2011.
Hooper was born in Dulwich, south-east London, and was brought up in Brighton, East Sussex, before she became a concert pianist, started one of the first hire-car companies and later ran Kingscliff House school, which went on to become Brighton College.
Millington said Hooper’s recovery has been “slow but steady”, adding: “Her recovery is as well as I could have hoped for but by no means is she out of the woods, so to speak, and we really have to wait and see how she continues to recover. The first month will be the most crucial.
“Nothing I or my team have done has been significantly different to what we do for any patient with this injury. The only thing that makes this interesting and unique is Mrs Hooper. I therefore feel the focus should be on this amazing lady and we should all be willing her to make a full and uneventful recovery.”
