Tennis!

On Sunday I played tennis for the first time post-LPAO! It felt great to be back on the court, and both my hips felt great before, during and after.

I played doubles for two whole hours, and while I didn't go for any crazy gets, I didn't hold myself back too much either. Obviously I was a bit rusty, but for the most part I felt really good and like I am ready to start playing regularly again. Yippee!!

I have been doing a lot with my hip lately: walking to and from work (it is only 20 min. each way), Pilates, spinning, and seeing my trainer twice a week. All that work has obviously built up the muscles quite well, and the spinning has been improving my cardio quite a bit.

So fitness-wise, things are going very well. Tomorrow I am going up to Dr. Su's office to get my 12-week post-op xray of the left hip, so we'll see how the progress is going on the inside as well. Dr. Su is a hip specialist at the Hospital for Special Surgery here in New York, and the doctor who first diagnosed my hip dysplasia and referred me to Dr. Millis. I'm having my xray done there so I don't have to drive all the way up to Boston, and so that Dr. Su can see the end result of his initial diagnosis.

Ready for Review

As of today all my imaging and office records from my visits with Dr. Su and the HSS Radiology lab are collected at Dr. Millis' office and ready for his review. Dr. Millis reviews potential new patients on Wednesday afternoons. So now I just have to sit around and wait for Dr. Millis' office to call me so we can begin scheduling my consult and hopefully my first surgery.

Meanwhile, my right hip is hurting a moderate amount. I stayed off it most of the weekend, but last night I played three hours of tennis. Perhaps that was a decision made with questionable judgement. Both my hips felt exhausted by the last half hour of play -- I could actually feel the exhaustion in the muscles in and around my hips, most likely because the muscles and soft tissue structures are pretty much all that hold my hips in place. The pain didn't really begin until today.

Today I can really feel the pain in the front of my right hip, where the labrum tear is. I've tried to limit my walking today and save all my hip use for tennis tonight. I probably shouldn't play, I know. But I have cancelled tennis for Wednesday so at least my hips will get a few days rest after tonight.

I honestly am not sure what I should be doing about my hip nowadays. Am I supposed to stay off it as much as possible? Or am I free to do my normal activities until surgery? I definitely don't want to cause damage that will jeopardize my surgery prospects, but I'd like to stay as active as possible if I may. I am going to start swimming for more low-impact cardio exercise, and keep up the weight training as well.

More when I hear from Dr. Millis' office later this week.

Once upon a time...

...I walked into a doctor's office expecting "take two asprin and call me in the morning" and walked out needing two surgeries instead.

But I guess this all really begins in high school, when I vaguely remember my hips hurting from time to time and eventually going to our local orthopedist. He told me I had "growth bursitis," but I don't recall what he suggested I do about it. He certainly did not suggest I had defective hip construction.

On and off during the fifteen years since that visit to Dr. Suburbs, my hips continued to hurt, sometimes badly, sometimes not at all. I don't recall it being one hip more than the other. I didn't mention the pain to many people along the way, partly because it was transient and so seemed less chronic in my mind, and partly because it was so chronic that I was used to dealing with it.

The pain is best described as feeling like a blister on the inside front of my hip socket; when my femoral head (the "ball" of the ball-and-socket hip joint) hit the "blister" in a certain way, there was a sharp pain. Sometimes it was enough to make me gasp; sometimes the pain shot down the front of my thigh. Sometimes my hips would ache when I was still, too, and I would feel the shadow ache down my thigh during the worst times.

The pain was exacerbated by certain types of exercise, mainly walking. I walked a lot -- around college campus, around my neighborhood when I lived in Los Angeles, almost everywhere once I moved to New York. If I did too much, the blister was irritated and then I had to stay off it for a while until the blister subsided. So that is how I played it.

I never took anything for the pain; if my hip hurt, I stayed off it until it felt better. In retrospect, I think this may have been wise.

In July 2007 I was seeing an orthopedist who specialized in sports injuries for an tennis-related knee injury, and I had him look at my hips while he was at it. "Mild to moderate trochanteric bursitis," Dr. Sports said, and offered me a cortisone shot. Beyond the fact that sticking an enormous needle into my hip to administer the shot sounded shudderingly awful, the treatment of just numbing the pain seemed short-sighted. There must be a reason my hips hurt, I thought. If I just numb the pain, won't I hurt myself more just pounding painlessly on a subdued injury? So I just carried on as usual.

In July 2008, my mother convinced me to visit Dr. Edwin Su at the Hospital for Special Surgery ("HSS") here in New York City. Dr. Su had done my mother's hip resurfacing earlier in the year and was "the best," she said, so I should really have him take a look. At the time, my hips were not hurting very much and I kind of blew it off. I went to Dr. Su's office to take the x-rays in July but didn't wait around to look at them with him. I figured he wasn't going to tell me anything different from what the other orthopedists had said.

Finally in October 2008, I went to see Dr. Su to view the xrays I'd taken in July. The only reason I was spurred to action was that my firm's New York office was moving downtown and I would no longer be close to HSS, which is on the Upper East Side. I figured I might as well get the follow-up appointment over with while I was still close enough to make it a short trip from the office to the hospital. If not for the office move, who knows how long I would have put off the follow-up visit?

Dr. Su took one look at my xrays and told me I had bilateral hip dysplasia. You may have heard of hip dysplasia in dogs, but it is basically the same thing for people -- hip socket is too shallow, putting strain on the joint and grinding away cartilage at the edge of the hip socket. I won't explain too much more; click the link if you want more details. The link above explains dysplasia as well as the surgery I need to have on both hips.

The surgery is called Periacetabular Osteotomy ("PAO") and essential involes chopping apart my hip and putting it back together in the appropriate postion, securing it with screws, and letting the bone fuse together in the new alignment. Pleasant thought, isn't it? And I have to have the surgery twice; right hip first, then the left within a year after the right, most likely.

In this blog I will detail my path from diagnosis through recovery. In researching this surgery I found several women who wrote blogs about their PAO experiences and I found the information and personal stories helpful in preparing myself mentally for this serious, and surprising, diagnosis and the surgeries it requires. I hope my story can be similarly enlightening, heartening, and informative for others.