‘Little Couple’ Star Jen Arnold Gives Update on Hip Surgery: ‘I’m Doing Much Better’

The Little Couple star Dr. Jen Arnold is “doing much better” and “getting strength back” after undergoing hip surgery, she exclusively tells In Touch. “I am now walking.”

“I’m doing much better now. I’m still in outpatient physical therapy, but getting strength back. But I am now walking,” she shares with In Touch. 

Jen, 48, went under the knife in February 2022 to fix her left hip, which wasn’t the first time she needed intervention. “I wore my hips to the ground, and I actually had them originally replaced during residency. So, that was about 20 years ago now. And they only last so long,” she shares. “I got a good 20 years out of them. And I had my second one revised in 2017 or my first one re-revised in 2017 and the other one just this past February.

Jen‘s journey to getting the surgery was a bit bumpy. The TLC star relocated from Florida to Boston with her husband, Bill Klein, and their two kids, Will, 12, and Zoey, 12, in early 2022, and the family caught COVID-19 shortly after moving to Massachusetts.

“We avoided COVID for two years. Once the kids were vaccinated based on their age in November, when we relocated here, we put them back in, in person school cause we kept them remote during the entire pandemic,” she says. “Then week one Will got exposed to COVID and got sick, which was hard to avoid. But thanks to vaccines we all did really well, but I had to delay surgery.”

Once Jen recovered from COVID and rescheduled the procedure, the surgery wasn’t exactly smooth sailing. “And then, on top of that, I ended up having a little bit of a pelvic fracture during surgery,” the Florida native explains. “So my recovery time was lengthened, as well, in terms of not being able to bear weight on my leg for a lot longer than normal after hip replacement or revision surgery.”

The former reality star is now “feeling great” amid her recovery. “I’m moving really well and getting back into the swing of things.”

Jen has been keeping her Instagram followers up to date about her recovery process in recent months. On April 3, just six weeks after her surgery, the TLC alum shared an update about her recovery saying, “This hip replacement revision surgery wasn’t the easiest.”

“Of course, having had over 30+ orthopedic surgeries in my lifetime where I usually am in a body cast for eight weeks. By comparison, this one was still a piece of cake,” she added with a photo of herself standing using orthopedic crutches.

“I’m now walking with only one crutch,” the mother of two later shared via Instagram on April 15, alongside a photo of herself snuggled in bed with her dog, Rocky.