Write it down, move forward!

Note:  Apparently since my blog template is so old, I can't use a jump break to shorten this novel.  Since it's mostly for my own brain and the sake of recording various life experiences I apologize for the millions of words.

I disappeared from blog-land from most of 2014 as much of the year was fairly traumatic.

Just over one year ago I decided to finally get to the bottom of some excruciating hip pain.  I can deal with a great amount of discomfort and pain as someone in the dance industry, but it had gone too far even for my pain tolerance.  The first ortho doctor I went to was puzzled. Yes, I'd had snapping hip syndrome and osteoarthritis in said hip for years since a college-era injury, no it wasn't the same pain.  Doc #1 was seriously resistant to declare it anything but a strained hip flexor.  Maybe it was because I walked in with my own theories, but he didn't want to do x-rays or other testing and recommended chiropractic and PT (I added in acupuncture, just for the sake of the experiment). All of the above, many more appointments, thousands of dollars and two cortisone shots later, guess what... no improvement!

Around that point in time I started feeling legitimately crazy, and not ridiculous normal creative/ADHD/zany Kim crazy.  Every time I got into my car and turned the volume up on NPR there seemed to be the same feature on chronic pain for this whole entire week in March. How could something unreal make me writhe in pain (yes, turns out that expression's real) on the couch for 20 minutes until a dose of the nearest pain killer kicked in? I vividly remember Russell staring at me in concern as I left him at the cash register, literally crawling out of a Home Depot into our car because I misjudged the window of time I was covered with medicine. It was bad! Too many times I found myself biting my lip and deep breathing through a rehearsal for one of the musicals I was working on because my medicine time-window was up and I felt far too unprofessional to excuse myself from a rehearsal.. this usually ended in holding a straight face until I shut my car door, and crying and yelling until I could get home and medicated.

After some research and with some additional urging from family and a couple close friends I swapped over the Sports Medicine Department at Children's Hospital.  Finally someone prescribed me a better anti-inflammatory painkiller and ordered an MRI!  Doctor #2 was so wonderful and called me at home with the results once he got to examine them.  The initial diagnosis was that I had a pre-fracture in the neck of my femur and had signs of a labral tear. Gross. After running for several months on Boston streets I wasn't surprised.  The initial goal was to clear it up by no activity, rough, but doable.

Five weeks later, no improvement, it was time for a followup MRI - otherwise known as the entire day I spent bouncing about Longwood scared out of my mind!  After getting into scrubs and trying to keep my toes pointed inwards in the MRI tube for far too long, I expected checking out and hitting Starbucks before my followup to discuss results with Doctor #2.  Instead I got a concerned looking technician asking me to wait in the waiting room, not answering any of my questions but taking the initiative to reschedule my followup appointment until later that afternoon.  I was instructed to pick up a mystery phone with no buttons, where Doctor #2 (from his office across the street) told me they had spotted a mysterious lesion hiding on the underside of my femur neck and could I please come back in two hours to be squeezed in for CT scans? Sure... what else was I going to say?

Around that time I was both trying to distract myself by using every single app I ever downloaded on my iPhone, stupid or not, and frantically texting a handful of people to share my internal freak out.  I killed my fully charged phone battery by 1pm, spent far too much money on a charger at CVS, scowled at a burrito, got two iced coffees (only one caffeinated) and awkwardly cried by myself in my car.  The last of that list is atypical for me, but realize by that point I thought I had some crazy bone tumor that was going to just devour my body whole.

Good news, bad news.  Post CT scans I ran across the street to visit Doctor #2 who was running over 2 hours late only to discover that yes, I had a tumor in the neck of my femur, but also it was completely benign.  Meet the osteoid osteoma... a tricky little bastard that lurks in the long bones, vertebrae and jaw bones of teens and young adults with the sole purpose of causing pain.  Boom.  In the late summer I went to Doctor #3 for a consult for surgery to remove it, and a short time after that I showed up at Beth Israel Deaconess, took off all my jewelry, got hooked up with some crazy drugs, hit the anesthesia, and woke up minus my tiny bony tumor friend, after it had been burned out of my femur bone.  I spent two days confined to oxycodone and the couch, where Russell brought me anything I needed, Merli came over with an activity bag full of presents to open on the hour to cure boredom, and Jenn & Christos showed up for some evening entertainment.  I'm hugely spoiled and lucky to have a great group of people in my life! Fast forward two days, and my mom came to take me out for the day.... and I realized while walking about I was both medicine and PAIN FREE! A couple of weeks later my mom and I were walking the entirety of Manhattan.  I will never forget that feeling of freedom.

Through the rest of 2014 Doctor #2 determined I still had the labral tear in my hip cartilage, but with a lot of attention spent on my muscle imbalances and a few appointments with the WIZARD known as Barry Meklir (Muscular Solutions in Coolidge Coorner - just go!), I was able to cancel the serious surgery planned with Doctor #4. Hard work!

I'll cut short the rest of the saga.  It's February 16, I feel GREAT and I never thought I would get here.  I'm working every single day to strengthen, stretch, workout hard and get everything under control after a year or more of inactivity.  It was a scary, sad and sometimes hopeless year (though marked with many great accomplishments and happenings in the world outside the hip), but it's over and I'm in control!

Contently unsettled

It's late, but not as late as it's been on many other late nights.

I'm tired, but too wired to sleep.

After a full day of painting and hip related appointments and moments I declared myself free of both things, flinging myself on the couch to read after rehearsal, and yet now I'm upstairs painting with a sore hip. 

Too much symmetry that's not symmetrical at all.

iliopsoas

I'm in the funny place of my hip feeling semi-ok, it has been on the up and up for awhile!  Good PT, various helpful forms of needles, taking care of myself has done wonders.

Strangely I find myself still cautious of movement, only because it has been the way I've lived for the last like 6 years!  My body is babying my hip by default, and I need to figure out how to responsibly let myself test the waters.

Even more strange is feeling normal, temporary hip pain.  I got great new sneaks and since I am feeling ok I'm slowly slowly starting to run again.  Most of the night running adventure felt the same as it always has.... nice brain freedom and focus on breathing lets me find a rare moment of zone-out.  Since it was also super cold out recently and my warm up wasn't as good as it could have been, my hip flexors were both uniformly a bit sore the next day.  For two seconds I freaked out (hip pain! my nemesis!), before realizing it was obviously temporary and somewhat normal.

So mindset shift.  Whatever.

Here's hoping Battle: Osteoarthritis/Snapping Hip/no cartilage + labral tear is at least held at bay for a good long time to come.

Time to face the HIP-issues...

SO!

I've been dealing with a shitty hip situation since halfway through college.  To summarize, there are three happily coexisting problems; osteoarthritis (I've worn through a lot of my cartilage), snapping hip syndrome (have an extra tiny little bony process on the bone that is catching a tendon that should ideally glide across the hip surface), and a labral tear (soph. year jazz class induced, sore subject.. no puns intended), which is best described here.

It's been sucky and painful and limited, and sort of depressing.  I saw an orthopedic doctor 4 or 5 years ago who half-heartedly conducted an arthrogram and MRI and said I could do PT or just go for a hip replacement, but also I should really stop using the joint as much as I was in an attempt to heal. Uh... ok.  I did the PT, it sort of helped for a bit before I plateau-ed which happened about the same time as I got kicked off my parent's health insurance and had to do the exercises from home.  For the past couple of years I've just been trying to cope/deal with it... either working through hip pain and sleeping with an ice pack, or just not moving at all.  I know what I need to stretch, what needs to keep strengthening, but there is never enough improvement to feel great.

Anyways, I am happy that after waiting for way too long, I am going to see a new specialist and get this stupid injury fixed!  I've been annoyed with my hip way too much lately, and have come to the conclusion that you shouldn't have to live with or accept day-to-day pain (if I do anything more than normal-people movement, which is obviously going to happen) and limited mobility!

It's probably going to take awhile to solve the problem/heal the injury, since I would rather not go invasive right away, but hopefully there is a fix out there for me.  I don't remember what it feel like to have two normal/functioning/pain-free hip joints!