About two months ago, I learned that I need a total replacement of my left hip joint. About one month ago, I scheduled the surgery. In about one more month, it will happen.
I want to blog about it because I was totally confounded by my symptoms for a very long time and could not find any helpful information. I also found very little specific information on what to expect with the surgery and the rehabilitation. If these posts can help anyone else going through this procedure, I’ll be happy.
So how did I know my joint was failing? I didn’t. For a few years (a bunch of years if you go back to the very first unidentified twinges), I’ve had mysterious, shifting pain in both my legs and hips. First on the right, then the left, then both sides, then the left again. At first it was just now and then, until it slowly (over three years or so) became almost constant. Sometimes my IT band was cramping, then it was my hip flexor, then an adductor, then the glutes. I mostly noticed it on occasion when walking and, slowly, it got to be reliable on any walk over 30 minutes or so.
At the same time all this was going on, I noticed strange things happening with my left leg. I did yoga regularly, and all of a sudden, I couldn’t do certain poses on the left side. Anything that brought my left knee toward my chest or armpit, or anything that twisted my left knee toward my right hip or shoulder, was suddenly impossible. And it hurt. Instead of the expected muscles hurting — those on the outside of my left leg and hip that were being stretched — it was my left adductor on the inner thigh and groin that cried out when I tried to twist in its direction. The adductor is supposed to relax when the leg moves toward the midline, but mine was screaming.
I also felt awkward and clumsy. My left leg felt strangely weak and unreliable. Sometimes it would suddenly give and shoot me a twinge of pain. Standing up and making my way through a crowded restaurant or down the row in a theater was an ordeal — I didn’t trust myself not to fall into people.
This was all very strange. I never felt anything resembling a swollen or stiff joint, only very angry, sharply complaining muscles. So I got massage and acupuncture. I had private yoga lessons. I saw a Rolfer and checked with my chiropractor. No one could explain my bizarre symptoms or why stretching and massaging weren’t helping.
It got bad. I could no longer walk more than 20 minutes without a lot of pain. I had pain after yoga class, pain after sweeping the floor. I still thought I had strangely tight muscles for some unknown reason, but it was impairing my life too much. And besides, I was healthy and in my early 50s, how could it be anything else? Finally, a physical therapist I’d consulted said it reminded her of a labrum tear. The labrum is the fluid cushion in the hip joint, like the meniscus in the knee and the bursa in the shoulder. She suggested an MRI.
I’ll get into the details in another post, but suffice it to say by the time I had the MRI and took it to an orthopedist, he said I did have a labrum tear but that was the least of my problems. Many of those confusing symptoms were part of the quickening failure of my joint.
I Googled my symptoms several times and never got anywhere. If you know to look up hip arthritis you might find something, but if you have no idea what’s going on with you and you just put in hip flexor pain, you’ll get a mess back. So here is my personal, unscientific list of symptoms that I think signaled the demise of my hip, in the hopes someone could find them and be helped.
- loss of range of motion — your knee will not fold upward or cross-wise like it used to
- instability — you feel wobbly standing on one leg or taking a step on one leg after first standing up
- weakness — one leg is a lot weaker than the other; very obvious when climbing stairs
- pain — unexplained pain and throbbing in any of the muscle areas surrounding the hip joint, like the hip flexors, glutes, piriformis, IT band and quads
- groin pain — sharp or throbbing pain in the inner thigh or adductor muscle, especially up near the groin
Now that I know what’s going on inside, a lot of this makes sense, but it has been both confusing and discouraging for a very long time.
On Elk Meadow Road 