My neck, my back...my HIP?

After years of ignoring, dismissing and resenting my knee I decided I owed our relationship more than just the brush off. I was in it, we needed to "heal" and get back to doing what we both loved: running. But we needed outside help - this was well beyond us "working it out ourselves." Knee and I went to see  Dr. Bones to see what could be done.

At the appointment I move my leg this way and that, up and down and all around. Bones looks at me and says, it's not your knee, it's your hip! All these years I had been blaming Knee! It wasn't knee - it was me (and my raging stupidity). He wanted me to have an arthogram done to further asses the damage.

Matt and I drove back 2 weeks later, I had a nice long needle with dye injected right into my hip joint under x-ray guidance - ouch! And then I was wheeled over to MRI. I get placed in the tube, the whirling of the machine begins and then I hear the tech in my headphones interrupting my Taylor Swift moment to say he needs to readjust me. He pulls me out of the tube, I scootch down, then up and then down some more. He loads me back in. This time Michael Jackson is playing! It is my moment! Then...errrp...the tech, again - he needs to readjust me, again. He pulls me back out, I scootch up, down, a litle more up, a little to the left. All the while I am missing my MJ moment in the MRI tube ( it was on my bucket list!) Finally, back in I go. MJ is over and Bieber is on. I sigh. The whirling starts..then errrpp....."Are you wearing a belly button ring? - Yaaaaaaa, I am gonna need to pull you out...again."

Two hours later, Matt drooling in the waiting room - we get our complementary CD and bounced. A week later, we head back to see Bones.

He pulls up the MRI and says:
You have a labral tear and FAI -femoral acetabular impingement - in your hip joint.  You have a mixed impingement type. In laymen-kate speak : the top part of your femur is deformed, it looks like a cam shaft while your socket pinches any soft tissue that might be dangling around. Your femur rubs abnormally in the socket and impinges the pinches labrum (soft squishy part of hip socket) resulting in a tear.

Um ok, so that means.....

That means you have premature hip ostoarthritis. You know, what old people get and need a fake hip.

Shit. And that means?

That means we need to do hip preservation surgery to try and put off a total hip replacement. But don't worry - I am a man with a plan!

Deformed, impinged, torn - is there any nice adjectives used to describe me today?
Matt says, "How about spritely?"

Plan: Arthoscopic surgery to perform periacetabular osteotomie(kate-speak: bone cutting and shaving to rid me of aforementioned deformity) and repair torn labrum with sutures and plastic anchors (kind of like what you used to hang up that a naked picture of your first born in the hallway. Crutches for 6 weeks, no driving for 6 weeks, no life - I mean no fun - I mean recovery for the whole summer, use a continuous passive motion machine (aka sit on floor with leg in fuzzy sheep cloth witha machine raises and lowers your leg) - for 6-8 hours a day - for 3 weeks, PT 3x a week for 2 months, and 6 months until you are back to full activity.

Thoughts: Running, you seem so close yet so far. Knee, I'm sorry about that misunderstanding, it truly was not knee it was me...Bones interrupts my processing and says, " I think you have the same thing going on in your left hip - just something to keep in mind as we move forward.....

Final Thought:  LIFE, whenever you want to get around to tossing, throwing or hurling that bone at me, I'm ready....

Here it is, like Shakira always said, "My hips don't lie"