Lightning captain and two-time Stanley Cup champion Tim Taylor underwent hip resurfacing surgery on his right hip Sept. 6 to repair a degenerative condition that plagued him for much of last season. The surgery was performed by Stephen Raterman at University Community Hospital, and Taylor has begun the rehabilitation process as he attempts to become the first player in a contact sport to play after the procedure.

In his first discussion, Taylor talks about why he didn’t feel like walking to the bathroom, let alone picking up a golf club, that his entire right leg was sore after the surgery, and what it was like trying to do normal things around the house.

It’s so tight in my right leg that, as I put my legs and feet together, the left leg is longer than the other one where they did the surgery. But it’s just because that hip is down lower on the right side and it’s just offset.

When Dr. Raterman did the surgery, and this is how he explained it to me after the fact: I was lying on the bed on my left hip, so that they can pull back the right leg and pull it up to my [butt]. As they pull it up to my [butt] he calls four guys in, he calls them his moving team, they come in and grab my leg and as hard as they can, they pop it over. The leg is already cut and the bone pops out and that’s the only way they can do it.

When they showed it on a clip on News Channel 8, you could only see one leg because my other leg was way over by my head. He asked me later if I was sore and I said, ‘Yeah, my whole leg, not just the one area.’ He told me that when he does it, it’s a procedure where they basically have to break my leg to pull the bone out, so the leg is basically somewhere else. They started it out at my rear, but they put it up near my head, pop it out and then it just lies there because there is no bone in it. It just lies there. The NHL Network was in there and they videotaped it and they asked me if I wanted a copy of it and I said, ‘No, no.’ I want to wait until I’m completely better before I see any of that.

Dr. Raterman was very positive and very encouraging to start moving and get going after the surgery. When he told me about the surgery and what was going to happen, he almost led me to believe that I would be out there wanting to golf and everything, and I almost felt like I was way behind because I had no desire whatsoever. I had a really hard time moving around and I thought when he did tell me that, that I would feel good after three or four days, and I didn’t feel very good at all.

I was petrified to get up and go to the bathroom. I was pretty sore. It was a long two weeks. Moving around the house was a chore. To sit down on the toilet was torture to get down. And then it’s real embarrassing that you go to the bathroom or take a shower and you can’t put your own clothes on. My wife, Jodi, was gone and I had to ask my daughter to come and help me pull up my shorts because I couldn’t get them up. To lose that, I can’t imagine older people going through this because you lose a lot of your independence. That was the hardest thing for me was losing that.

The first two to two-and-a-half weeks weren’t very good. Now I feel like I’m getting more into things, I’m going to the gym in the mornings to do some upperbody, I’m riding a bike for about 20-25 minutes here and there. But now I feel like I’m starting to make strides where I’m almost walking half decent. I feel like I’m getting out of the house more, I went to get a haircut the other day, that was a big day for me.

During the first three weeks I had to force myself to get up. Now I’m walking all over the house, going to the computer, watching TV, back to the computer. I’m doing a little more therapy where I’m on a ball and throwing, trying to get more mobility. But now it’s better where I can go workout in the mornings, feel a little bit better. And I think that goes along with your mind as well, you are out and now it feels like I have a purpose. Torts [Lightning coach John Tortorella] has given me a couple of things to do during games as I watch the games from up top. So that gives me, for my mind, more of a purpose, too.

I’m driving around, today is actually the first day I’ve been driving on my own. It felt real uncomfortable the first few days. I drove my wife’s car and I thought it would be easier because it’s a little bit higher but it was harder. My leg was in a bad position and I kept trying to get my leg up off the seat to comfortable because it kept falling asleep. I know a lot of people have gone through a lot worse than what I’ve gone through, so I hate to keep harping on it, but I’ve never gone through something like this.

On his kids, daughter Britany and son Wyatt: I haven’t seen the kids play hockey for a while – I don’t miss those drives to practice – but I miss watching them. I think they were a little apprehensive at first. They came in and saw me on the Thursday of the operation, then I was in there Friday and Saturday, but they didn’t come back to see me. I don’t think they wanted to see me like that, so that was the tough part. Now, I think, they see me move around and they see with their own eyes that I’m going to be OK and I’m not going to be like this forever, which is something I think they thought when they first saw me.

I can’t cross my legs, that’s a hard part because when I’m watching TV I like to cross my legs. It’s not so much limitations that I want to do it, it’s just that I don’t feel like I can do it. It’s one thing if you want to go out and play golf and you feel great and you are dying to get out there but can’t. But if you don’t feel like you can play, then you don’t really want to. It’s like, I don’t really miss hockey right now because I know that I can’t put a skate on. But once I get to that point where I feel like I can, that’s when it’s really going to hit me.

The worst part for me is going to be a month-and-half to two month period as I get to that four month time to where I feel great like I can do everything, but I can’t, they are going to have to hold me back and keep me off the ice and everything because the ball, the bone has to go around it and adhere. That takes time.

[Taylor joked before surgery about getting wheeled out to watch the first two days of training camp] That was before I had the surgery, but there was no way I was leaving that chair. Now if someway that chair could be moved from my living room to up there, then yes, but that just wasn’t happening. I didn’t feel good at all. My head was spinning all the time. I was on percocet and vicodin. I would have the weirdest dreams where I was setting fires on the ceiling, which was fine because as long as that fire was going in my mind I could go to sleep. I was in the hospital, there was a TV on the wall and my IV right there and they were all moving toward me and they all had to be moving in that direction then I could go to sleep. If they were all mixed up, I couldn’t sleep. It was really weird.

I have to have a card now to go through airports because of the metal. This thing is heavy as hell, I mean it’s pretty friggin heavy. I had it in my hands and it’s like 10 pounds. I said to him, the team has approached me about doing some stuff at school and is there any way I could get one of these, maybe show the kids, if he had an extra one or if I could buy one off him. He said I don’t want to buy one of these and asked me how much I thought it cost. I thought maybe $100 or $200, it’s just a piece of steel. He said that the one he bought was $12,500 and that was the deal he got on it. I said I won’t be buying it then.

Reporter Erik Erlendsson can be reached at (813) 259-7835 or eerlendsson@tampatrib.com.