Finding out

It's a strange thing when a doctor tells you there's something wrong with you. Something really wrong. Not just that you need glasses or a cavity filled. But something truly WRONG with you that can't be fixed by anything simple. When I first heard the term "hip dysplasia" I felt like I'd been slapped. Here I was, not quite 44 years old, being told that I was broken.

My story actually begins on the streets of Manhattan. Although unaware of how my life had changed, I was aware that my hip hurt after two full days of chasing my speed-walking sister around the city. Christmas came and went, but the pain remained. Bothering me in yoga, going away for a while, making its presence known again while walking through the mall. I kept waiting for it to get better. But it didn't.

So now I'm aware that my right hip  is actually malformed. It meets clinical criteria for being dysplasic (the left one doesn't, thank goodness). And I have to deal with that. I have to make my peace with the fact that something went wrong while I was forming in the primordial ooze of amniotic fluid that nurtured me. Something that now has caused my labral cartilage to tear and my hip to hurt. And without a fix, it will keep hurting. And it will only get worse.

The final decision that I needed surgery came on May 23rd. A day that had lived in my head for two weeks as I waited to see "the hip dysplasia guy". Meanwhile, I researched. I read up on hips and mechanical function and what can go wrong with them and what can be done to fix them. I learned the term periacetabular osteotomy and read blogs written by people who have had them. After meeting with Dr. Peters and getting his very calm, very measured opinion, I'm now writing one of my own.

I'm writing this because I found reading the experiences of other people to be very helpful as I did my research. I'm also writing it because, I found out, I'm "a one percenter". That is, I'm one of the 1% of people over 40 who actually get to have this done. So this blog will be for those select people who find out that they will get a PAO, even though many people their age won't.

My thoughts wander to where this blog will eventually lead. I wonder what I will write on June 6th or if I will be able to write then at all. So maybe I should wonder what I will write a bit later, say, June 10th. I wonder what my experience will be like. I hope that I can eventually say "yes, it was hard, but I did it and now I've been free from pain for a year". I really hope so.