As I mentioned last week I was pretty stressed to attend my appointment with my orthopaedic consultant. In April, his registrar had led us to believe that the x-rays he’d seen, meant that I would need either corrective surgery or a hip replacement.
So although I didn’t really want another surgery, over the past few weeks, I thought about the pros and cons and managed to get excited about the future. Planning some things that I haven’t been able to do as of yet and I focused on being able to get myself back to full time hours and being able to plan for my future.
Sadly, this wasn’t the case when I attended my appointment last week. He did explain that the MRI Arthrogram wasn’t as clear as the metal in my hip replacement had obscured the scan. I was informed that due to scan not being clear they couldn’t compare my 2012 MRI to today’s in 2015.
My consultant advised that it is likely that there will be wear and tear as right hip been put under pressure for a lot of years. However, he felt that there was nothing surgical that he could do and within a 30 minute period my hopes had been destroyed.
Let me explain: I had my hip replacement in April last year as I was under the impression that I would have a better quality of life. I could travel like I’ve always wanted to, I could mother a child and could be fit to look after him/her. Now as dramatic as it sounds I’m back to square one.
Maybe I was naive to think there was a quick fix. I appreciate that my consultant won’t do any surgery unless he’s 100% sure that it would make my situation better and I’m grateful for this. But being referred back to pain management and physiotherapy isn’t what I expected either.
My parents and I, are very worried about the amount of medication I’ve been taking since age 11 and I’ve made it clear to my doctors that although tramadol doesn’t make my pain disappear, I am not willing to go back on anything stronger.
My nurse at pain management had made it clear before my hip replacement, there was nothing more that I could try. I had tried gabapentin, pregabalin and tens machine none of which worked. Pre op I was taking morphine and although I’d love to be pain free again, it’s not worth the withdrawals or internal damage over a long period of time. I feel my body has been through enough!
So now I need to find my strength again and bounce back from this. It seems that I’ll be using my crutch for the forseeable. However, no surgery means I can go to Florida in July 2016 as planned :)
Until next time.
Amytobefree 