My monkey slippers are having a bit of an outing today. By the time you read this I’ll be in hospital, waiting to have an arthroscopy on my right hip.
Way back in February 2009, it snowed. I had a doctor’s appointment that I couldn’t miss, so I put on my army boots and walked. In the space of two and a half miles I fell down, hard, not once but three times. Naturally, this hurt. I ignored the pain for quite a while, thinking that of course my hip would hurt after I’d fallen down on it. But during the course of 2009, I became slower and slower. Walking is my primary form of transport, so this became a bit of a problem.
In the summer I bought a new bike with lots of gears, but it was still painful to ride it very far. In the autumn I took up clog dancing, and that’s when things really started to hurt. I carried on ignoring the pain, partly because I was really enjoying the dancing, but mostly because I was getting married in October, and I was so busy that I didn’t have time to think about anything as trivial as a sore hip!
Our honeymoon was very active – we spent a week hiking and swimming at Center Parcs, and another week walking all over London. Some days I was in so much pain that I’d be in tears by the time we made it (slowly) back to the apartment. That made the holiday much less fun than it ought to have been.
So when we got home, I made an appointment to see the doctor. She sent me to a physiotherapist, who frightened me by telling me that he thought I had a crack in my femur that I’d been walking about on all year! I was rapidly sent off to hospital for x-rays, which showed nothing. Thank goodness! It did show the deformity in my left hip, but the right one definitely wasn’t broken. Then it was off for an arthrogram – a singularly unpleasant experience which I won’t describe and wouldn’t recommend! This was immediately followed by an MRI scan, to try and see inside the joint.
The MRI revealed a tear in the cartilage, and today I’m in hospital for the keyhole surgery which will fix it.
The down side of the surgery is that for several months my hip will actually be much worse than it is at the moment. This is extremely frustrating, as I want to be better as soon as I can! But hopefully, once the joint has settled down, my hip will be fine and I can get back to walking and hiking and cycling again.