Monday, July 30, 2007

All in a Day's work

I made it. I am exhausted. But I did it!! Yay!!! I feel so accomplished. Did it hurt? Yes, but it was sooooo worth it!! I am back to work! Luckily, I had a light schedule today. There were a few "issues" involving my work performance, that I had not anticipated. First, I was working with a lady who preferred to be on a low table, so in order to stretch her, I was kneeling, sitting back on my heels, I suddenly developed that deep, gnawing groin pain, and had to find another position to work in. The other issue came from left field. I work in an outpatient orthopaedics facility, with mostly surgical and orthopaedic conditions. We also have a pool. I had a new patient, wheelchair bound, who wanted to use the pool, and needed to be transferred from her wheelchair to the table. This almost never happens, my patients are usually higher level functioning. There was no way in hell I could pull this off, probably even on a good day!!! After some discussion and shuffling, I got the situation under control!!!

Besides for that, everything was going pretty well, until my SI joint decided to give me trouble. Yes, again, when it rains it pours. Interestingly, my dysfunction was a posterior inominate on the right, normally, I get an anterior inominate, I assume it is from the hip flexors tightening up and pulling it forwards. Today it was posterior. P hypothesized that maybe it went that way bc the hip flexors are weak? I muscle tested a 4,4+/5 on that side.....so who knows. He corrected it with a MET, he said I was "stuck" on that side. He also released (sigh, again) my iliacus and psoas, which REALLY hurt. I stood up and felt great, walked to my computer, sat down, and had groin pain (sigh). I am beyond frustarted at this point, I don't even know what to think anymore.

The rest of the day was uneventful,, the kiddies slept late, until almost 5:00, so we did not do anything this afternoon, other than a short trip around the block, L on her bike and Jk in the stroller. What a sight it was, since L is not great at riding, me pulling her with one hand and pushing Jk with the other! As I sit here and blog, my hip pain is back with a veangence, and just in time for my Target excursion!!

If you have gotten this far in my post, I want to try something. One of the hardest things I found when my hip journey began was finding a list of symptoms correlated to a labral tear and FAI. If you would like to help, I want to compile a list of people's sympotms in the "comments" of this post, and in a week or so, publish it as a posting, so others have a place to compare notes.

Here were my pre-op symptoms: Groin pain, deep deep groin pain, not always excruciating, but so annoying I felt like cutting off my leg, tight hip flexors, pain with sitting, pain with walking uphill, pain with pushing my stroller. I did not have radiating pain down my legs, all the hip pain was anterior medial.

11 comments:

Jess said...

Hi Susie :-)
Just wondering, I know you had a LOT more work done on your hip than I did, but after your first scope (right hip?) did you ever feel better? and if so, how long before the clicking/catching subsided? I'm six weeks out today from labral debridement for labral tear only and still have heaps of clicking and some catching, so just curious as to whether I'm crazy to think it should have settled by now? It's starting to concern me.
Cheers

Susie said...

Hi Jess! The first surgery addressed a labral tear and pincer impingement. Clicking was not one of my bigger symptoms,I did have it, but it didn't bother me, and I had to really work to elicit the click, I am not sure it was the torn labrum or my psoas clicking. I like to think the little clicks were the labrum, and the bigger clunks were the psoas. I felt really good after the right was done, it was a slower recovery than my left, the only complaint I had all along was that I had pinching at endrange with my ROM. My pre-op pain was pretty much gone after the surgery, and then it was surgical pain I was navigating, as well as muscle issues.
Are you having pain? Or just clicking? It may be your psoas muscle snapping, and can be alleviated with some stretching. Are you seeing a PT?
Were you cleared of FAI?
Let me know if I can help in any way!
Susie

Funnelcloud Rachel said...

Good idea about the list of symptoms! I'll give you my list, but I haven't been officially diagnosed yet.

Another idea - it would be incredibly helpful to have a vocab/definition list of hip terms! I get so sick of googling terms like "flexion" or "psoas" and I feel like I could explain my symptoms better if I knew the proper terminology. I know these are everyday words for a PT, but for the rest of us they're new and hard to keep straight!

Yona said...

Susie,
You are a trooper! I don't have a diagnosis of FAI at this time, but I have had a labrum tear and scope. Now the pain has decided it missed me and returned - how nice. Love your idea of people posting their symptoms, so...my symptoms were/are as follows: At original onset of pain, I had acute, sharp pain along with a deeper pain in the anterior (non-PT term - front) hip. Once the acute pain subsided, I was left with a persistent but not 100% constant deep ache (only way I can describe it is comprable to early labor pains, or really bad menstrual cramps, or, in other words, not bad enough to put me in bed, but bad enough to ruin my day - but deep in my hip joint) along with the occasional "catching" of my hip. I would be walking and suddenly it would pinch and hurt too much to walk normally. I would usually stretch or range my hip and that would sometimes work. Otherwise I'd just have to wait it out, and later that day, the ache would be particularly bad. Now (3 + years post op) I'm at the achy stage, with occasional catching and occasional pain that is bad enough to keep me from sleeping, ie: can't find comfortable position, even with pillow between legs, must get up and take 600-800 mg Advil and wait. Those have been my symptoms to date. Hope this helps. I am eager to read about other people's symptoms - knowledge is power.
Yona

Yona said...

Susie,
You are a trooper! I don't have a diagnosis of FAI at this time, but I have had a labrum tear and scope. Now the pain has decided it missed me and returned - how nice. Love your idea of people posting their symptoms, so...my symptoms were/are as follows: At original onset of pain, I had acute, sharp pain along with a deeper pain in the anterior (non-PT term - front) hip. Once the acute pain subsided, I was left with a persistent but not 100% constant deep ache (only way I can describe it is comprable to early labor pains, or really bad menstrual cramps, or, in other words, not bad enough to put me in bed, but bad enough to ruin my day - but deep in my hip joint) along with the occasional "catching" of my hip. I would be walking and suddenly it would pinch and hurt too much to walk normally. I would usually stretch or range my hip and that would sometimes work. Otherwise I'd just have to wait it out, and later that day, the ache would be particularly bad. Now (3 + years post op) I'm at the achy stage, with occasional catching and occasional pain that is bad enough to keep me from sleeping, ie: can't find comfortable position, even with pillow between legs, must get up and take 600-800 mg Advil and wait. Those have been my symptoms to date. Hope this helps. I am eager to read about other people's symptoms - knowledge is power.
Yona

Yona said...

oops, didn't mean to post twice!

Jess said...

Is it possible to email you Susie? I can't seem to do it through your blog. If you'd like to contact me at jess@planet-x.co.nz I'd love to flick you an email and have a chat :-)

Susie said...

Jess (and anyone else interested)
my email is suzq613 at aol dot com

Susie said...

Rachel,
I will try and create a list of mos commonly used words and definitions, in the meantime, hipscope.net has some good info, all links off of this page: http://hipscope.net/hip_anatomy.html
Susie

Anonymous said...

you are doing greta keep it uplittle girl
good luck with your mri today
everything will be ok
good luck

Funnelcloud Rachel said...

Susie - thanks for the link, that was just what I was looking for to help me decipher all the hip terms!