I made it!

Tomorrow will mark one week after my fifth hip surgery. Whoah. Under the circumstances I'm actually feeling pretty darn good. I've got lots of pictures and I hope to start tomorrow on a day-by-day chronicle of my surgery and recovery. As you may know from experience it takes at least a week to beginning to feel "normal" after an arthroscopy. I'm taking it very slow right  now and it's a bit difficult to make my brain focus on writing right now so I'll keep the posts short and sweet!
Ty

my story

It's been a while since I wrote a post about what's going on with my hips, so here it is!  I believe I last wrote that I was going to start a physical therapy program to "restart" my poor psoas muscle. I have been having groin pain since August and despite steroid injections it kept getting worse. After starting a PT program for my psoas, which was believed to be the source of my pain, my pain continued to get worse. We decided to switch to massage which didn't help either. Right now I'm going to PT twice a week for treatment with Graston tools to hopefully break up my scar tissue. I can't say that it's helping but it does leave me pretty sore...and black and blue! We're in contact with my surgeons and we're trying to decide what The Next Step should be. It's looking like another arthroscopy to make sure my labrum isn't torn...oh boy.

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!

hip news

Hello! Because this blog is combination of my story and hip surgery here's a little note of what's going on with my hips right now. We saw my hip surgeon today who is sports medicine and did my arthroscopy last December. He was happy that I am crutchless at the moment (yay!) but this new pain in my left hip I've been having is making everyone confused. He determined that I have multiple "pain generators" including my iliotibial band (ITB) and something that's causing deep groin pain, pressure and the occasional locking or catching. My ITB has thickened  and snaps over my trochanter (the bone you feel on the side of your hip) The ITB runs over the trochanter and should glide smoothly, however when it thickens it snaps over the trochanter instead which can also cause knee pain because the ITB connects on the side of the knee. In order to diagnose what's exactly causing my pain I need to have a series of steroid injections. Though the screws from my open surgeries have been removed, my metal anchors holding my labrum together say in my hip for good. This means I can have an MRI but it won't be very much use because the metal of the anchors will cause artifact (blurriness). So, instead I am going to have steroid injections as soon as possible in both my ITB and inside my hip joint. If my pain completely goes away we leave it at that, if not, the same injections will be repeated. If that doesn't help either my surgeon will come up with a plan most likely involving a ITB release and possibly another arthroscopy. Fingers crossed that we get this on the first try!

my surgeries!

Here's a little background about my hips, tomorrow I will start regular posts about hip surgery and FAI. If you have an idea for a post please let me know chances are if it has to do with hip surgery I can write a post on it :) I've read lots of great hip blogs but I haven't really seen too many about open surgery. My goal for this little blog is for it to be a good resource with posts about all aspects of having a hip injury or surgery (both open and arthroscopic) and not just my personal story (although there will be plenty of posts about that too!) So here goes-
April 2008-right hip open dislocation (7 hour procedure, 3 labral anchors, 3 trochanter screws)
July 2008- left hip open dislocation (same as right)
April 2009-right hip trochanter screw removal
December 2009-left hip arthroscopic labral repair combined with screw removal