The Hip Saga - Labral Tear

My blog started based on crafting. Then I got hurt.  I have plenty of craft activities in my sidebar archives, so if that's what you are looking for, awesome!  In the meantime, my personal saga of pain continues.

So if you've missed the progression, here it is -

-Memorial Day weekend, my back starts hurting in my left SI joint. I didn't do anything to it, just started on its own.
-Find a chiropractor and start going that Wednesday, daily for the next week and a half.
-Chiropractor finds a laundry list of things out of adjustment, and sets to work.
-Day 3 or so she adjusts my hips and hip sockets. Back no longer hurts. Woohoo!
-Now hip hurts.  To clarify - she didn't make my hip hurt.  That was the original source of the pain.
-Chiro sends for xray - comes back fine
-Chiro sends for MRI - comes back with issues
      -2 Labral Tears, Left hip. Superolateral and anterosuperior.

What does that mean?  Here's a good literature review of the condition - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2697339/

Here's my pseudo-scientific explanation:

Your hip is a ball and socket joint.  The head of your femur is a ball, and the socket is part of your hip.  Where the two meet, there's sort of a gasket that helps keep the femur in socket, called the labrum.  It maintains suction in the joint and keeps it from dislocating.  Here's a representative of it:

Source

When you tear the labrum, you lose the suction, and things start to get wonky.  Depending on the degree of the tear, your femur may move differently than it should, causing more damage.  Another cause of the pain is the torn piece of labrum catching in the joint when you move it. Turns out the labrum is really heavy into nerve fibers, and gets very little blood flow.  Which in layman's terms, means "hurts a lot and doesn't heal".  This condition can be a gradual condition cause by anatomical deformities in the joint (types of impingement - FAI), acute injury, or who knows what in my case.

At this point, I have trouble bearing weight on the joint, started using a cane.  But it didn't support enough weight, so I moved to crutches. Since last Thursday, I've been on crutches.  I'm in excruciating pain for a good part of the day.  It ALWAYS  hurts, but hurts worse when I move different ways, or put weight on the joint to walk at all. At night it hurts so bad I can't sleep, but the only way I can lay is on my back, so I can't roll around to get comfortable. I've tried OTC pain meds/anti inflammatories, ice, warm baths, etc, and nothing touches it.  I did finally give up and try the Tramadol I had from last summer's appendectomy, which took the edge off and finally got me some sleep.

Yesterday I met with an orthopedist (an appt I had made before I had the results of the MRI).  What a waste of time that was.  He wasted both of our times. He asked what hurt, and I told him, and told him I couldn't get around and take care of my kids without crutches, to which he VERY unsympathetically responded, "oh, I"m sorry". Guy made me walk and flexed my leg around, which hurt so badly I was crying.  He took me out to look at the MRI and had trouble locating the trouble spots, so just stuck with the radiologists report. He didn't have anything to say about the crutches, which I put myself on, even when I asked him. "Oh, yeah, fine".  He was also reluctant to give me pain meds, asking if I had a GP who could prescribe them. I don't have a GP, and honestly, I just paid this guy to essentially tell me nothing, and now he can't do ANYTHING for me?  He ended up writing me a script, but I was so frustrated. He referred me to an arthroscopic hip surgeon in the same practice, Dr. John McDonald, to discuss hip surgery. Hopefully he'll be able to tell me if I have a deformity that caused this, and that he could fix.

So I have that appointment next Wednesday.  The surgery is a rare one, and not too many doctors do it, and do it well. There are 4 big name doctors that people travel to, but I can't afford that (money and time), so I'm researching all I can find here in the state.  Anyone know of any doctors who perform hip arthroscopies, and have good results?  I'd love to hear personal experiences.  If anyone is interested in seeing the MRI from it, I could maybe figure out how to post it.

Oh, and I found out my insurance (Aetna) has a history of not covering surgery to repair labral tears and/or FAI.  Anyone have any recent positive stories regarding Aetna and this condition?

Who know my blog would take a turn for hip injury?  Crafting on hold, must fix leg. And the idea of camping and sleeping on an air mattress after hiking?  totally on hold. :)

Thanks for keeping up!