For gospel living legend Fred Hammond, I Will Trust isn’t just the title of his latest CD; it’s a bold declaration in the face of pain, doubt and fear that has helped carry him through “the most physically and emotionally taxing experience” and year of his life.
In January, the multiple Stellar, Dove and Grammy Award-winning artist underwent an excruciating double knee replacement surgery – the same surgery that claimed the life of his biological father – and his road to recovery has been a public one. This past fall, Hammond wrapped up a two month, 32-city “Festival of Praise Tour” (with Donnie McClurkin), sharing his real-time journey of learning to walk again with audiences night after night.
Now, more than 60% recovered, the 53-year-old father of two is healing more than just his knees. He’s exercising his faith, growing emotionally as a man and continuing to create soulful music that encourages and empowers others to keep walking even when it’s hard.
He’s focused on the better that is to come and living in gratitude of all that’s been.
BlackDoctor.org recently spoke with Fred Hammond to find out what life in the pursuit of health and happiness has been like:
BDO: Your story – your testimony- is just really, really powerful. Your father had a similar surgery, or actually the same surgery – did you have any fear about having this surgery done?
FH: Totally. I put it off for 15 years. I put it off for 15 years, you know, just figuring that they would just stay or maintain the level of damage that they had 10 or 15 years ago. Gradually, it got worse and worse and worse and worse, ‘til the pain was so excruciating and my legs had bowed out. I was sweating all the time. If I stood for more than five minutes I would profusely sweat. I just thought that that’s the way it was for me. You know, just, you know some people sweat. But, it was from that pain, walking through airports and just regular day-to-day life. So yeah, I was afraid. I really, I didn’t want to to do it – at all.
BDO: So what was the turning point for you where you just said, ‘I have to take care of this right now’? Was there a defining moment?
FH: Yeah, it was just, it was the pain. It was just so much that it was just unbearable. And I was taking cortisone shots and then they stopped working. Where one shot would last me three months it was down to once a week and I knew at that point and time. They told me when it got like that you would have to go in, so I just made the decision to go on in.
BDO: It changed your life dramatically, having to deal with learning to walk again. How did you stay encouraged through your recovery process?
FH: It was hard; it was real hard. Going to therapy, it was nothing easy. I’m talking, like, tears on the bike – the stationary bike – and it would be like man, I’m trying to learn how to ride a bike that you can’t even fall off of and it’s hard. You know, when you’re a kid you worry about falling off the bike. When you’re trying to learn how to ride your biggest fear is falling off and scraping your elbow and falling off on the cement. But this bike you couldn’t fall off of and it was like I still was having trouble learning how to peddle…..I would just put my head down and the therapist would just put her hand on my shoulder and rub my shoulder and say ‘Yeah, I know’.” Then I hated the part where she had to find out how deep my veins were and they would have to push it. Oh my God! I was trying not to scream out in the room because it’s so many other people in there doing therapy and a couple of times I didn’t make it [laughs].
BDO: Man….
FH: It was something because like I said, I didn’t have a regular leg to stand on. Maybe that’s where it came from ‘You don’t have a leg to stand on.’
BDO: One of the things I love is that you have always been just so transparent about everything that you’ve been going through with your health. Do you feel like that helped you during your recovery, just to be so transparent with your fans on social media and everything like that?
Fred Hammond Gets ‘Transparent’ About Life After Knee Surgery was originally published on blackdoctor.org
