hip news

Here's a quick update of what's going on with my hips. We saw my arthroscopy surgeon on Thursday and I had  an ultrasound and a steroid injection on my psoas tendon. (The psoas, think so-as, runs right along the groin) The good news is that my pain is most likely not related to the labrum. (yay!) The bad news is that I still have quite a bit of pain, both on the side of my hip and deep in the groin. The plan is to start a new experimental physical therapy program in an attempt to "restart" my psoas. If this doesn't work, we're looking at a psoas tendon and iliotibial and release surgery. None of us want to do another surgery but we're ready to do what needs to be done. I'll have more posts about arthroscopic surgery this week!

hip week

It's hip week! (like shark week...but not really) anyways, this Friday (December 17th) is my one year anniversary of my left hip arthroscopy, so this week all posts will be arthroscopy related. But first here's a little about hip day. Hip day started two years ago on the one year mark after my left hip open dislocation surgery. I'm not entirely sure why we picked that surgery to celebrate. Maybe because it was the hardest for me (there was a complication that landed me back in the hospital, which is another story for another time) or maybe because it was summer and summer is convenient for celebrating. So now for the past two years on July 30th we've celebrated, nothing big or fancy. Sometimes it's having a nice dinner or watching a movie. We don't celebrate all my surgeries but this sort of sums up our whole crazy journey in one day and gives us something positive associated with this crazy thing. This Friday will be bittersweet for me. I made it through a year but I spent 1/2 of it on crutches and now I'm in the exact same position waiting nervously as the doctors decide if I need yet another surgery. But these days are a time to look back on everything you've been through both good and bad. And if there are no good things, there is always cake.

B is for bilateral

So most of you know that I have bilateral FAI (for those of you who don't know, bilateral FAI means that both my left and right hips are affected) From the hippies that I've talked to I've discovered that most hippies feel symptoms in only one hip and if they do become bilateral it is a very gradual process and one hip tends to be slightly worse. I've heard of cases where symptoms in the second hip develop after the first hip has been treated surgically. I'm unusual (but we all knew that, right?) and both my hips started symptoms at the same time and were equally bad (this may have caused some of the complications in my diagnosis, because my case presented itself so oddly) Bilateral hippies have a special set of challenges when it comes to recovery. If you have one "good" and one "bad" hip the good hip can pretty well compensate for the "bad" hip when weight bearing is limited post-op. But if you have two "bad" hips the increased stress form compensating and being on crutches can cause pain that can cause pain that just isn't what you need when you're rehab-ing your other hip! Another question is whether you can have both hips done at once. I believe it has been done, but I have never personally spoken to anyone who has gone through this. My surgeon told me that I needed a good 3 months between open surgeries or I would be "married to a wheelchair". I believe that if you feel your hip is ready for the stress of having the opposite hip operated on then you should go for it. But only you, not your surgeon alone can make this decision!