So, if you know me or have had the privilege of listening to me whine about it online, you’re aware that I suffer from what I like to call POORLY DESIGNED ANATOMY, also known as hip dysplasia.
The short story is my hip sockets are too shallow, which has caused arthritis and bone spurs in my right hip.
I’m in pain every day. Even if I’m not moving, I’m in pain. I always know when it’s going to rain. It’s getting much worse much more quickly as time goes on, and I’ve noticed other parts of my body are starting to suffer, specifically my left knee and foot that support all the weight I can’t put on the right side of my body.
I’m never in alignment and I always have knots in my lower back. My limp has gone from noticeable to, “Hey! What the heck happened to you? Why are you walking like that?”
It’s gotten to the point where just putting a sock on my right foot is painful and difficult because I’ve lost so much mobility in the right hip. It moves like, well, NOT AT ALL. I can do less and less with much greater pains than ever before.
Seriously. It sucks.
Physical therapy and anti-inflammatory medications have done very little to help a problem that there’s really no cure for, save surgery.
The orthopedic surgeon I see in Erie doesn’t know what to do with me or my stupid hip. He seems to understand the pain level is becoming intolerable but he has never put an artificial hip into a 29-year old woman. His main concern is the younger I am when I have the replacement, the more likely I am to need multiple replacements down the road.
“I put an artificial hip into someone and hope it lasts for 20 to 30 years,” he told me last night. “I need yours to last 60.”
Soooo, he’s sending me to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center for consult on a total hip replacement.
There is an alternative hip resurfacing procedure, but my orthopedic said it’s unlikely that anyone will perform one on a young female of child-bearing age because the metal on metal involved circulates metal in the bloodstream, which could be dangerous to an unborn baby. (Uh, and me.)
I’m hoping that the doctor I’m going to see in Pittsburgh will tell me to wait. I’m hoping that he’ll tell me to hang in there until I can’t possibly take it anymore. I don’t want to have hip surgeries the rest of my life. That is ridiculous. I’m not even 30 yet.
But I also can’t bear the thought of 10 to 15 more years of pain that’s so bad I dread standing for even an hour. Thirty minutes on the elliptical and I undoubtedly wake up in the middle of the night in a ridiculous amount of pain. I can’t even run into the grocery store without a pit in my stomach because I better hurry and find what I need before my hip becomes unbearable.
And if things are this bad now, how am I going to chase all my future dirty, snot-nosed toddlers around the trailer park and Wal-Mart parking lot with a hip that doesn’t function properly? That’s totally unacceptable.
Actually, I’m scared. And that really pisses me off.





