I wonder if Lady Gaga will find out she has hip dysplasia when she's 41. I did - and yes, I was born with it. Maybe writing about it will help someone else who gets diagnosed with it as an adult, or maybe it will help me keep my sanity by getting off my chest.
This is not my x-ray, but you'll see the dysplasia on the right side.
I've been an athlete my whole life, it's just who I am. I race, I compete, I win. And right now, I kind of feel like my body is turning against me. I've been an emotional roller coaster for me since February 2012, when this all kind of came to a head, and I'm ready to get the hell off.
You see, I had a bad fall where I landed on a cement floor and on my right butt cheek. That fall left me in enough pain to be laid out on the ground in tears, and to take time off from training. About a week to be more specific....I was heading out to Park City, Utah to snowboard and didn't want to take any chances. I felt ok while I was out there, but definitely knew something was off. I didn't attribute the way I felt to the fall, because I had kinda been complaining of tight hip flexors for years. After the trip, it was business as usual with my workouts - CrossFit classes 4 or 5 times/week, running, some swimming, and a little yoga. I was hurting, but stupidly pushed through the pain. I did however, schedule an MRI, which was done April 5th.
Easter Sunday was a gorgeous morning, so I took advantage of it by going for a run. By mile 2, I was feeling pain, and it was weird, the pain was moving all around my right side - my glute, my hamstrings, my inner thigh, and my hip flexors. The pain was deep though, and by the end of the run I was walking backwards up the hill to my house because it was too painful to walk forward. My appointment with the doctor to go over the MRI was on April 11th, and when I read that report, I knew I was a mess. I had a torn labrum, torn glute, and torn hamstring. He sent me to the city to see a "specialist", who without looking up from his chart when he walked into the exam room, literally said to me "so, I do surgeries on Wednesdays & Fridays; when would you like to come?". Uh, yeah....see ya later asshole. (Dr Robert J Meislin, NYU) Then began the quest to find the doctor who was going to tell me what I wanted to hear...
In the meantime, I had started PT, and was working on getting the muscles around the hip stronger to support the joint (I thought I WAS strong...). My activity was pretty much limited to swimming, and I had to stay away from anything involving deep or repetitive hip flexion, as that would aggravate the torn labrum.
Fast forward to a couple more doctors, and finally I'm referred to Dr Bryan Kelly, Hospital for Special Surgery. His first available appointment wasn't until August 21st, so I just continued to do what I was doing, but tested my body every now and then by seeing how it felt to bike, run, or row. Ouch - it was not good.
I did a lot of research on Dr Kelly, and this whole torn labrum thing, so, I was pretty excited for my appointment with him. He's pretty much THE guy in New York to deal with this type of injury. After that appointment, I knew I finally found the right doctor. Although he didn't tell me what I wanted to hear, he was patient, honest, thorough, and most importantly, told me he would "fix" me.
As we were going over my x-rays, MRI, and CT Scan, he suggested I had a mild case of hip dysplasia, which no one had mentioned before, and I had only heard of in dogs. WTF?!? After some strength and mobility tests, he decides we should inject the labrum with cortisone, to determine if that's really where the pain is coming from. I keep a pain log over the next couple of weeks, and we discuss on September 18th. It was great - I felt immediate relief, and almost no pain. I "worked out" with a therapist at HSS who gave me different, and more challenging exercises to do, and under the orders of Dr Kelly, had me try to run a few times - I'm talking like a 5 minute run here - nothing crazy, but man did it feel good to do it. All was well and good until November 26th, when I started feeling pain again, and a lot of it.
Thankfully, I had a phone call scheduled with Dr Kelly on November 30th. After telling him how I was feeling and what was going on, he suggested that I schedule an appointment to see his colleague, Dr Sink, a hip dysplasia specialist, to discuss the option of fixing not only the torn labrum, but the dysplasia as well. He's thinking the dysplasia is the real issue here, and it could be just a band-aid to fix only the labrum.
My appointment with Dr Sink was on December 11th. His job was to determine the likelihood of re-tearing the labrum if I don't address the dysplasia. At this point, I was having surgery one way or the other. It's either Dr Kelly fixing just the labrum - an arthroscopic surgery, three weeks on crutches; or fixing the dysplasia and the labrum - a much bigger surgery, and six weeks on crutches. Unfortunately, Dr Sink thinks I need the latter. And if I decide to only fix the labrum, the joint will develop arthritis, and I will need a complete hip replacement in five years.
The surgery is called Peri-Acetabular Osteotomy (PAO), and it's a doozie. if you're interested, check out this video: (scroll halfway down the screen, click on the box that says Peri-acetabular Osteotomy)
http://www.hipdysplasia.org/adult-hip-dysplasia/adult-treatments/hip-preservation-surgery-for-adult-hip-dysplasia/
I'm ready though....I want the surgery, I want this to be done with. Problem is, the earliest they can do the surgery is April 10th, which is a really bad time for me, so I'm looking at the end of July. The thought of having to deal with this for another seven to eight months though is hard, but it is what it is. I have a phone call scheduled with Dr Kelly on the 18th to discuss. Perhaps they'll give me more cortisone to help with the pain until the surgery.
Now that you know the deal, in the future I will keep these posts (hopefully) short and sweet, and keep you updated on my progress. I'm not the person who likes to go to the gym just a couple of times a week to workout - this is my life, so you can bet your ass I'm going to do what it takes to get my life back.
XO
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