Feelings

So far I have only written about the chronology and science of this new circumstance. Along the way, my feelings about the diagnosis and surgeries have run from astonishment to acceptance, denial to determination.


When I first got my diagnosis, I was completely taken aback. As I mentioned in my first post, I had expected to be told to take painkillers, or do some stretches. I did not expect to be told I'd need one surgery, let alone two. When I left Dr. Su's office that day (a perfectly normal Tuesday, which seems to be when all shocking and bad things happen), I was distraught. It seemed my entire life would be taken away: days in the hospital, weeks barely mobile, months on crutches, half a year before I could play tennis again.

In the days between my diagnosis and my MRI, I researched my condition and the surgery. I read several blogs written by young women uncannily like myself, struck almost as if on cue, in their late twenties. It is because of those blogs that I began this blog -- in an effort to add to to the well of personal experience with PAOs, for current and future dysplasia sufferers.

Now my feelings have shifted from panic, self-pity and denial to resignation and motivation. I am convinced I need the PAO surgery in both hips and I am actively trying to move the process along to get started as soon as possible for the right hip. After 15 years of pain, it is time to get this fixed, hopefully once (ok, twice) and for all.

Artwork courtesy of and (c) Olle Söderström.

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.