First, Happy slightly belated St. Patrick’s Day! Hope you were out drinking green beer and eating corned beef and cabbage!

It’s been a little while since my last post and I have lots to report. For those who don’t want to / have time to read the full post, here are the bullet points:

1. One of the bones in my right pelvis that was broken during the PAO surgery (the pubis bone) did not grow back together. Dr has prescribed a bone stimulator / increase protein to make it grow. If it doesn’t work I may have to have ANOTHER hip surgery on my right side to bridge the gap.
2. We are a go for my Open SDD surgery on my Left Hip on May 8th (pre-op April 30th).
3. Sinus surgery is set for THIS week (Thursday, March 21st). Basically, Dr is creating a straight shot out of my sinuses / removing bone and tissue / fixing my deviated septum. Same day surgery, home Thursday evening, around a week of recovery.

THE LONG VERSION
I met my hip surgeon for my 3 month RPAO follow-up / 2 month pre- Left hip Open SDD appointment on March 15th. The appointment started with x-rays. I met with my Dr. and mentioned that although PT (physical therapy) was going well and even though I am able to walk unaided, I was concerned about a new sort of pinchy/burning feeling that I’ve been noticing in the front of my hip. It also sometimes feels like the tendon is rolling over the joint, almost like it’s catching.

During my hip evaluation, my Dr. had me sit at the end of the table and try to lift my leg up off the table (really hard to do) while he pushed down. It was excruciating and I squealed in pain, not a normal reaction at 12 weeks post surgery. The Dr. then pulled up my x-rays. The x-ray showed that one my the bones had not grown together, possibly at all. The two sections of bone appeared to be about a centimeter apart, not even touching. This is called nonunion (when the bone does not grow back together following the surgical break) or slow union. It is one of the complications that can result from PAO surgery, normally only in about 1% of cases. Oh, lucky me. Even when it does happen, is typically asymptomatic and therefore does not require further medical intervention. Unfortunately for me, it may be the reason that I’m having pain in the front of my hip and, it’s possible that the tendon is getting stuck in the break. Gruesome.

The Dr prescribed me a bone stimulator which is a machine I will have to wear every day at home and will hopefully stimulate the bone to regrow. His staff also recommended I increase my daily intake of protein and calcium as much as possible so unfortunately for the animals, my efforts toward vegetarianism are taking a break. Hopefully the bone stimulator + increase in protein works. If it doesn’t, and if I continue to have problems, I may have to have a further surgery on my right hip after my SDD surgery in May. I should know more after my next appointment. In any event, it doesn’t sound like it will prevent me from moving forward on my left hip surgery which is good.

My next appointment on April 30 is my pre-op for my Open SDD surgery scheduled for May 8. It’s so strange to think of going through all of this again when I feel like I’m not even through the first surgery but I have to just keep moving forward, partly because I don’t really have any other choice.

In other news, my sinus surgery is scheduled for this Thursday, March 21. It’s a same-day surgery so assuming that the surgery requires that I get there at 7am, I expect to be home by 3pm or 4pm. The doctor is performing a septoplasty, turbinectomy, balloon sinuplasty and I don’t even know what else. The goal is to create more space in my sinuses so that when I have allergy problems, my sinuses don’t get so inflamed that they completely block and get infected. I also started back to allergy shots, 4 shots 1-2x week.

This year is already wearing me out and it’s only March. It feels absurd to me that my hip problems have so taken over my life. I am really looking forward to getting though the next 9 months and getting back to my life (surgery free!). Until then, the saga continues.