Math teacher Marty Mackar recently rescheduled hip surgery to miss fewer school days.

Mackar has been at Mayfield since 2010, and for the last three years has been experiencing crippling pain in his hip due to arthritis. Mackar said, “What happened is I was born with my bones being misshapen in my hip which I did not know, and because they were misshapen I was prone to getting arthritis at a young age”.

This condition went largely unnoticed for the majority of his life until a tragic soccer-related incident took place three years ago. While playing, another person rolled up on his leg, which caused the condition to turn active. He said, “I actually tore some muscles in my leg, and when those torn muscles had healed I was still in a lot of pain and the doctor said that because of that injury that’s when I started to fell arthritis, but it has always been there.”

Mackar went on to teach for another three years while visiting doctors and various professionals. Eventually, a surgery date was set for August 2017. Mackar, however, was not content with the date and decided to postpone the surgery for another four months, to have it in the middle of  December. Mackar said, “Well they wanted to do the surgery in August, and that was the start of school, and I did not want to miss it”.

He decided to endure the pain for up to 4 extra months. He said, “The beginning of school is such an important time when you meet your students, and build rapport with them, so I decided to have my surgery in the middle of November so part of the recovery time would be Thanksgiving and Winter Break when we don’t have school, so I would not be missing as much school time”.

This decision, however, was not supported by some of the students in Mackar’s classes. Sophomore Adara Tsirlin is in Mackar’s 8th period class and preferred that he didn’t leave when he did.  She said, “He left during the hardest parts of the year, during which I needed more help, and he wasn’t there, so I couldn’t go to him and ask him for it.”

She also elaborated on Mackar’s substitute teacher. Tsirlin said, “She kind of taught in a different way, and I wasn’t really that comfortable to ask her for help, and the time I did, she wasn’t really helpful, so I didn’t really like that Mr. Mackar wasn’t there.”

Maggie Hall, a student who was in Mackar’s class last year said, “I think there are two sides to it, because it’s better for him to miss less school because then he can be there to teach the kids more, but at the same time the kids needed help before the Midterm. If they had questions it’s not like they could ask the substitute, so it’s complicated”.

Now Mackar is back and is more ready than ever to teach his students. Mackar said, “I am very happy to be back to work. I was bored to death of watching daytime television. I still am in a little bit of pain, but I’m recovering.”