Author Archives: dramaticallyhip

Shopping, and a little fear

Leave a reply

I am 36 days away from the first PAO and I decided to take the plunge and make my first purchase of durable medical equipment.  Yes, I promise, this was as uninteresting as it sounds. 

Following the surgery I need a lot of ‘aids’ to help me around the house and, you know, to move and live and stuff.  These aids include (but are not limited to): a shower seat, a gripper (to pick things up from the floor), a raised toilet seat, a wheelchair or walker and crutches.  I will get my compression stockings (hot!) while in the hospital and will wear them for 3 weeks following surgery.

I have decided to start with a wheelchair after the procedure.  I figure it will be my safest bet in case it is slippery after the surgery.  I really don’t want a situation where I have to walk a long distance or accidentally fall after the surgery.  I may change my mind after I have it and switch it out for a walker.  I am 35 years old and may need to use a walker.  This is so screwed up!

As to the crutches, I have decided to go with the Millenial Crutches.  They are supposed to be better for long-term usage and since I will have to use them at a minimum for 6 weeks after each surgery, and likely longer, I had better find something that I like and am comfortable with.

I don’t know what it is.  Maybe it’s the cold, or the fact that it’s November, but I think I am starting to get a little worried.  I feel like it is something that is or should be happening to someone else, but certainly not to me.  And yet it is.  It just feels weird and sorta creepy.  I really want this all to be behind me.  Partly I just want someone to understand how hard I fear this is going to be.  What if it is TERRIBLE and then, 4 months later, i get to do it again?  What if I can’t get back to my life for so long that things get screwed up.  I am starting to play the ‘what if’ game and it’s rough.  I know I shouldn’t but I can’t stop it. 

I’ve never had a broken bone — I don’t understand.

Some Tech Specs

Leave a reply

I thought today would be a good day to describe exactly what the hell this PAO thing is and what is going to happen. This is more of a “here is the info for anyone reading this blog” post than a “here is what I am feeling” post.

Here are a few links that describe “what is developmental dysplasia in an adult hip:”

http://www.hipdysplasia.org/adult-hip-dysplasia/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hip_dysplasia_(human)

I thought this general info would be useful because when I first heard of dysplasia, my only points of reference were to either babies or big dogs. And in truth, that’s where most instances of dysplasia appear. Humans normally only have to deal with dysplasia as babies because it’s normally caught at birth.  On the other side, large dogs like German Shepherds and the like start to have problems with dysplasia as they age.  But in either event, it sort-of the same idea.

This is an (animated) video of the procedure (a Periacetabular Osteotomy or PAO) which is available on my Doctor’s website and which I found tremendously helpful when I was trying to figure out what exactly is going to happen on surgery day. It’s kinda great because it shows you how the surgery works without being super graphic or creepy (which, let’s all be honest, this is going to be SUPER graphic and INCREDIBLY creepy):

http://www.hss.edu/animation-PAO-periacetabular-osteotomy.htm

I also really like the drawings on this link which show what the hip looks like before and after the surgery (again, as a drawing, not gross or gory):

http://aussiepaohipjournal.blogspot.com/2011/02/found-this-website-which-might-be.html

I thought about posting a link to a video of a real PAO but it is hard enough for me to look at and I figured most people would be grossed out. However, I can tell you that it’s possible to find if you go to YouTube.

What none of this shows is how your hip looks after the surgery with all the screws (yes, I will have a ton of screws in me after this procedure to keep the newly positioned acetabulum in place while the bone heals).

I am definitely having a PAO on my right side (the December surgery). Depending on how it goes, I will have either a PAO or an Open Hip Debridement on the left (the April surgery).

I figure I’ll wait to get into the details of hospitals stays, recovery times, physical therapy and all that other bullshit until a later date – this post is super fact intensive and I’m getting bored writing it which leads me to believe anyone else would be bored reading it.  But I do hope it’s helpful!

Suck It

1 Reply

I’m not sure why but I am in a really crabby, really anxious mood today.  The weather has started to get colder and I was excited about that for about 23 seconds until I realized that as the weather gets colder, I am getting closer to my first surgery.

It’s funny to feel so excited about something and so angry and anxious about the exact same damn thing at the exact same time.  A little part of me likes the idea of surgery.  No, not because I’ll be better afterwards (which, to be perfectly honest, I don’t know that i believe at all [more on that later]) but because it’s something new to do.  I find myself distracting my energies all the time now.  Trying to find something new to focus on or think about.  Surgery is just another distraction, something I’ve never done before.  A “what the hell, I have a few months of agony to kill” sort of activity.

I wonder sometimes if everyone thinks like this or if I’m the only one.  Probably the latter, though with a few individuals along for the ride.

The anxiety makes sense.  It’s what I feel like if I were looking at my situation from a third-person’s perspective, I would imagine I should feel.  Surgery is scary and something could go wrong or…worse…  Let’s be perfectly clear here.  If I die because of this stupid hip surgery my ghost is gonna be PISSED OFF — just generally a really crab who is gonna poop in your yard and scare your kids and steal your goat.  I have no idea what the hell I am saying but seriously, the dead version of me is gonna be really annoyed if I die.

I think, though, that the more pissed off version of me would be the one that is either in perpetual pain because of the surgery or who is further immobilized.

I don’t even know what I’m talking about.  I guess I’m just anxious about the surgery and the waiting — 66 more days to go.

The anger is just at a myriad of things – my aging, my body, my history, my genetics, my situation, my school.  I am so out of control — I feel like I’m riding on a wagon in the old west, in the dark, and the horses just got spooked by a fox and start running but the wheels are made of wood and start to break down and the wagon is literally falling apart but the horses just keep running.  I feel like I’m the guy holding the reigns and but who has literally no control at all.  Yep, that’s me, right there, with the runaway horses and the broken wheel.  Stupid foxes.

Tonight I’m meeting up with some ladies from my “hip women” group who have all gone through or are going through the same thing as me.  I am looking forward to that.  And to pottery, which is later.

I guess that today, it just feels a little hard to breathe.  And to keep it together.  And keep moving forward.  But I will.  Or at least I will try.

T-minus 73 Days

Leave a reply

Today, as I was riding on the subway, I realized for the first time that I am having PAO surgery.  Not “Hey, yea, sometime in the future someone is, like, hypothetically going to break my hip and I am gonna have surgery, no big deal” but more like, holy shit, someone is going to break my hip in the foreseeable future.  And they’re gonna do it three times.  And I’m gonna be in the hospital.  And totally immobilized.  And it’s gonna suck, a whole lot.  Oh, and I can look at a calendar and it’s 73 days away.

Not sure why it never really struck me.  It’s not like I don’t know its coming.  It’s more like I can’t believe that it’s coming…for me!

I’m sure it’s gonna get a lot more real soon, like when I have to buy my raised toilet seat or shower chair or grabber.  Or when I kick myself for not doing a better job of losing weight and have to KILL myself to drop 10 pounds asap (that is basically now).  But for right now, 73 days seems still far enough away that it has the veneer of ‘not so soon’ yet the reality of ‘not far enough away to ignore anymore.’

Trapeze

Leave a reply

I had no idea how it would go when I decided to take a trapeze class with two bad hips and a bad back.  I figured, hey, I’m already broken, what’s the worst that can happen?  I never, ever expected to have so much fun or feel so much more like myself than I have felt in months.

You know what hanging from a trapeze does not do?  It does not demand that weight and stress be pushed down on your hips.  It does not result in repeated shocks to your hip and back.  Instead, you have to use your core and upper body strength (I apparently forgot that my body was made up of parts that are NOT my hips) to hold you up, to cause your legs to swing, to float and to fly.  Was it super easy?  No, not if you want to try to do cool things.  But I don’t like super easy.  I like to be pushed and I really like to not do so well at things and try to get better through practice.  And you know what else?  It’s really really fun (and yes, I am scheduled to do it at least three more times before the season is over).

It’s likely that I won’t be able to do it next season because i will be recovering, but that’s OK.  It was just really nice to feel like a normal, not so broken version of myself, even if only for a few hours.

 

Resignation

Leave a reply

A lot has happened since the last post and I think it was more than I could handle so I just crawled into my shell and pretended.  I wouldn’t say I’m not pretending or not trying to hide in my shell anymore.  I guess I just want a record of how I was doing at certain points in this process so I damn well better write them down lest I forget.

The short story (at some point I’ll post the long story but I simply don’t have the time or energy for it today) is that I am scheduled for a Right PAO on December 13, 2012, and am tentatively scheduled for a Left PAO on April 4th.  I am taking a semester off school to do this and I have such mixed feelings about it I want to vomit on a daily basis.

I guess I really don’t have a choice.  On the one hand, I can have the surgery, have my life suck TREMENDOUSLY for months and maybe a year and then get better and have my life back.  On the other hand I can NOT have the surgery, watch as my body slowly (or quickly declines) and eventually have a hip replacement then another then maybe another.

Fuck.

I promised myself when this process started that I would never thing “why me” – that I would never feel sorry for myself and that I could feel bad or depressed by I could not throw myself a pitty party.  That promise is getting really damn hard to keep.  Sometimes I just want to scream that I don’t understand why my body is being such an ass and why do I have to have these pains every day and why do I have to be such a physical mess.  And no, I don’t get it and I do feel pitty and that makes me MADDER.

But I’m gonna do it.  And I am gonna try to write here because otherwise I am worried my head will explode.  And I am going to admit that I am scared.  Not so scared that something will go wrong but scared that even if things go right, I am putting my life on hold for a long time and it scares the shit out of me.

Lab reports should not be delivered after hours

Leave a reply

So I got the report of my CT Scans and X-Rays.  They came in the mail on Friday and I noticed them at about 10pm.  Despite feeling absolutely craptacular from my cold, I managed to obsessively disect the information for two hours.  I fee like some sort of tragic and far less stylish version of Sherlock Holmes, except the clues are laid out in front of me and all I have to do is “search” the internet for answers (i.e., plug in the numbers and see what other people like me have already said).  Basically, it was exciting but not that exciting.

Like a good detective, I have developed a theory based on the information provided.  I think that finding a theory has helped to distract me from the fact that I have more than a week until my actual appointment when a legitimate doctor with a degree and skills can tell me what the hell I should be doing.  But until I have further assistance, I am on my own to find the answers.

Theory 1 – I have dysplasia in my right hip and will ultimately need a PAOBUTsince the dysplasia is mild, there is going to a lot of waffling back and forth about whether it is necessary but then it’s going to become apparent that since my labrum is retorn (Theory 1(a) is that I tore my labrum again), the only long term alternative is a PAO.

Theory 2 – I have mixed CAM pincer inpingement and retroversion of the acetabulum.  OK, this isn’t really a theory because it’s what my imaging report says from my CT scan, so I guess my theory is that I am going to need an arthroscopy to repair the impingement (an acetabuloplasty and a femoral neck osteoplasty).  Theory 2(a) which I seriously doubt is that I am going to need a reverse acetabular periacetabular osteotomy (a reverse PAO) but, again, I think there is about a 2% chance of that happening.

So now I wait, and go see my doctor, and get a second opinion.  I just want to have a plan and to know what I need to do and get going so that someday soon, I can get my life back.  That, I would really like.

In the beginning

Leave a reply

I’m trying to figure some witty way to start this blog but really, I can’t think of anything witty.  I’m not one of those people that’s quick on their feet with a sarcastic retort.  I normally don’t realize when people are being sarcastic and I am incredibly gullable.  However, I am exceedingly introspective and have a lot to say about what’s going.

I’m 35 and I feel like my body is giving up on me.

First things first, though.  I am only starting this blog now because I have some potentially serious situations ahead for me, in terms of my hips.  My right and my left hips, not one or the other but maybe both.  Maybe.  Who knows.  Anyway, so I have a ton of stuff on my mind right now and I think that anyone who is my age would have a lot of things going on in their head if they had pain every day and weren’t able to run anymore and were told they might someday need a total hip replacement if they didn’t take it easy — I’m getting ahead of myself.

OK, so I have hip problems.  Maybe.  The facts that I know are as follows:

I had arthroscopic surgery in my right hip in January 2012 to repair a torn labrum.

When the doctor did the surgery, he found that I had moderate dysplasia in my right hip (“not mild, not severe” as I understood, after the fact, that described to my husband and mother).

I recouperated from the surgery and thought I was doing really well.  Then the pain came back.  And now it won’t go away.

My left hip hurts.  Similar to the right but I have no idea why.

I have had MRI’s, X-Rays and CT Scans.  I have been through numerous physical therapy appointments.

I have two herneated discs in my lower back (L5/SI and L4/L5).  The L5/S1 is pressing on the nerve root.  I am never without lower back pain. (I only mention the lower back pain because I am worried what implication any surgery or procedures on my hip would have on my back.  That and the fact that it literally hurts ALL the time — I haven’t been able to sneeze standing up straight in years)

I have appointments to see doctors and I am scared.  And excited.  I am hopeful but worried.  I am pissed off.  ALL at the same time.

I want to believe that I am not alone in this so I am writing this blog and NOT publicizing it but if someone stumbles on it, more power to them.

I will try to keep it updated, as the process unfolds.  I make no promises.  It is selfish to keep a blog – this is my selfish attempt to connect and yet remain unconnected.  I do hope it helps, both me and someone who might read it.

And so it begins.