Surgery Options

I’m so grateful for the questions I’m receiving! I’m so happy I asked – now I know what to clarify, expand on, and think on. I’m going to back up to May 2018 to address these four questions centered on surgery options.

“Why did you choose to do the surgeries rather than accepting and adjusting to a lifestyle with bad hips?”
“How many surgeries did you think you were going to have?”
“How did you deal with the bad news of needing more and more surgery?”
“How did you prepare for each new surgery/recovery cycle?”

When I first learned about the damage in my left hip joint (torn labrum and accompanying issues), the next logical step was to find out why the damage was there. This is important because without finding and fixing the cause, the damage would repeat itself. This led us to discover my cause – hip dysplasia. This is basically a shallow socket which causes the joint to be unstable. The extra stress placed on the joint due to that instability is what caused the damage inside the joint. I needed the tighter, more stable fit that comes with a correctly formed, deeper hip socket. 

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At this point, my options were to fix it and therefore completely preserve the hip, providing the opportunity to carry on with 100% return to all of the activities I enjoy, OR leave it and have it decline into irreparable damage where hip preservation would no longer be possible. I would then need a hip replacement (for which I wasn’t even a good candidate given my scanty bony anatomy) which would limit my activities severely and need to replaced at some point given my age.

The choice was a no brainer!

At that point in time I was still able to (and did) run, but it was obviously damaging. Choosing to ignore it was tantamount to choosing The Stupid Card.

Sign me up for preservation surgeries please!

Going in, I knew for sure that we would have three surgeries. A hip scope to repair the damage inside the joint, a PAO to repair the dysplasia, and hardware removal once the bones had healed. The PAO would provide the correct space for the joint to stay healthy in, so once all three of these surgeries were done I should have been good to go.

But, I also knew there was a strong possibility of needing to do at least a scope on the right side since I could feel the pinching that is indicative of a torn labrum. Given that my left torn labrum was due to hip dysplasia, I was fairly certain that that was the cause on the right as well – meaning we would need to do a PAO and hardware removal over there, too. So, I had the idea already that we’d need to do the same three surgeries on the right once we were done with the left.

That brings me to three for sure surgeries on the left, and one but likely three on the right.

Going back to May 2018, we also noted at my first appointment that I had severe osteitis pubis but decided to table it until we were done addressing the hips. Sometimes it can resolve on its own once the hips are healthy. So, that was parked in the back of my mind to return to somewhere down the line.

Now that brings me to three for sure surgeries on the left, and one but likely three on the right, and possibly one in the center. These are the seven total I mentioned the other day in my “What If?” post.

Only time would tell how this would all unfold, and it unfolded over a long period of time. There was no dramatic moment of my doctor coming the room and announcing that I would need 12 surgeries over the course of three plus years. No epic bombs were dropped. It all came in steps over a long period of time.

For example, the left hip scope and PAO were done in Aug. 2018 and that hardware didn’t come out until March 2019, 7 months later. The right scope was done in April 2019 and right PAO in May 2019 – 8 and 9 months after we began. I had been “in” it for awhile and had adjusted to what it takes to work through this. Also, my doctor is very calculated in what and when things are done, always seeking to avoid surgery by trying less invasive options first – like the various injections we tried along the way.

Because of the patient way we handled each issue that arose – hello adhesive capsulitis and crazy metal allergy – I never felt like each decision to do more surgery was a shock or bad news in any way. Quite the opposite, I always felt relief! We had a plan, and because we had tried everything else, I felt settled and excited.

Preparing for each new surgery/recovery cycle is similar to preparing for sport or music performance. There’s a practice period pre-op and then the actual surgery (race/performance). The recovery is where I launch myself into better than ever, similar to taking what I learned in a race or performance and using it to go practice some more in order to be even better at the next race or performance. The recovery period is where I tap into my tools. The recovery period is where I focus on the gift of it all – the gift of getting to have a body that functions correctly for the first time in my life! – and do everything I possibly can to go get that gift. The recovery is where I lean into the obstacle because it is always the way to new opportunities and something greater.

Recovery is where I tap into drive, goals, grit, and everything else that motivates me – more of the HOW – which I will dig into tomorrow.

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