5 months post open surgical disclocation/debridment surgery for FAI

It is Sunday 11^th May 2014 I am now 5 months post op. On the whole I am doing well. I would say I am back to pretty much normal ROM with my op leg. Generally it is pain free. The area where the screw heads are located gives me pain if I  lie directly on it. Or bump into something with it. I can live with that so will not be looking at getting the screws out anytime soon. When I have my left hip done, I will have to decide if I can live with that uncomfortable feeling on both sides, so I guess I will get them taken out in the future.

My op leg continues to feel different from the other one. I can tell the muscles are still weak, the main ache being at the top, and slightly to the side of the front of my thigh. This comes on when I have done too much. There is also some pain in the joint itself, which comes and goes. It is different to the sharp stabbing groin pain I had pre op and is bearable. When it does happen, it hurts more as I take weight off that leg during walking. It can still often feel a little stiff when I stand after sitting for a while, as if the muscles need a moment to realise I have stood up. There is some occasional inner thigh and IT band pain, but again, not like pre op. All of this I can live with and presume will only continue to improve.

My back continues to be troublesome, but again, not as much as pre op. I do still get some pretty nasty SIJ pain, but I haven’t had the feeling of my lower back  about to go into spasm for a long time. Something tells me my back has its own issues to deal with. I know the disc bulge and degeneration in some of the lumbar vertebrae are there and will not go away. But my theory has always been that if my hips work better, may back has a better chance of becoming stronger. Hip surgery always seemed like the better option that spinal.

 My non op leg is pretty ropey, but I have less in the way of groin pain than pre op. I presume this is because it is now not working so hard/compensating for the other leg. I still get some nasty catching and clunking and the feeling of restriction in certain exercise or when riding my horse. I am getting alot of thigh pain at the moment. In particular a nasty sensitive skin / muscle sensation on my IT band and inside of my left thigh. I don’t know what it this is about and hope it will settle with some rest. I have to accept that my non op leg is not going to feel great and that I have to grit my teeth and bare it until I can have it fixed in Autumn 2015. But now that I know it can be fixed, it seems more manageable. Unlike this time last year I now know there is a way out to all this, that I am 5 months through my plan of action that started in December 2013.

Activity wise I am back to normal. I am back full time with my pet care business. Driving 30-40 miles a day, feeding cats, walking one dog 1.5 miles a day weekdays and then doing another 1.5-2 miles a day with the adhoc dogs on my books. With walking down to the farm to care for my  pony and walking my own dog, my pedometer ap is saying I am doing 4-5 miles a day during the week. Our elderly pony has been unwell and so has required a lot of extra care (much of it bending/crouching down bandaging his feet and putting on his hoof boots) and my hip has coped well with that. I am riding my horse twice a week and lunging him twice a week. I rode him out on the gallops last week and we had a  fantastic gallop, he was really gunning for it as it is something we have always enjoyed. You can’t beat that feeling of tears streaming down your face from the wind as your horse gallops so fast you think his legs will be fall off! And yet he is so well behaved all I have to do is sit back and ay whoooaa and he will drop gently back to a walk. My hip has also coped ok with that, a fair amount of stiffness delayed onset muscle fatigue but I can cope with that as surely it only means my legs are getting stronger again. The more I do it, the better it should get being my theory. No gain without pain.

Medication wise, I am still taking 20mg amitryptaline at night and usually 30mg codeine at night also. This is to help me sleep and help with hip pain on the left, not my op hip. I take paracetamol and ibuprofen in the day as needed, but not every day.

On  Thursday  I went for a gym induction at a local ladies gym. It wasn’t at all what I was expecting (from experience these things are given by super fit people who have no understanding of why I am so unfit and just involve telling me I am overweight and then showing me how t o use the gym machines). I am not a natural gym goer. I presume that if you work in an office all day, the gym is the perfect release. However, I am working outside/driving all day. I walk dogs for 3-5 miles each week day, look after my pony and ride my horse who is currently on full livery. For me the gym is an extra chore on top of everything else, and a drain on my limited energy. Outside of a gym I don’t actually feel that unfit, especially when I walking briskly with a dog or mucking out our pony. But as soon as I walk into a gym, I feel instantly overwhelmed by the fit toned types leaping around. I feel self conscious that I am so untoned and inflexible and a bit fat. The lady that runs this new gym, Rane, is in her late 40’s and yes she is super fit but she is also super nice and really interested in me and my case. She has 25 years experience in the fitness industry and keeps up with a lot of the advances and research, and seems to understand the link between physiotherapy and fitness. She was excited to see me x-ray and surgery pictures that I showed her on my iphone as I needed to know she understood what I had had done.

She first got me to stand on a step with my socks off so she could take a picture of the back of my heels. This picture shows how my Achilles tendon is pretty straight on the left and curved to the outside on the right, which is what is causing my right foot (op side) to stick out a 45 degree angle when walking and standing where as my left foot points forward. She says my arch is also collapsed on that side.  According to her, this is due to my muscle weaknesses in my hips and lower back. She doesn’t want me going on any gym equipment for a few weeks but instead to have two sessions with her a week to work one to one on some muscle activation exercises. At first I thought “oh right, and how much is that going to cost me” but, it will be all included in my gym membership of £24.99 a month, as will the Pilates sessions she also wants me to attend.

So what the hell, I will give it a go. This hip journey has lead me to be very cynical of health and fitness professionals (I still have the words of my  ex-chiropractor ringing in my ears from 5 years ago “I don’t see why I cant fix you” –  at that time I believed him. Now I am very sceptical of such statements). But like I say, I will give Rane and her gym a go. There are not extraordinary costs involved, she appears to know what she is talking about and I like her. It is nice to have a fresh set of eyes on me. So time will tell on that. I hope that perhaps this time in 6 months I have stronger  glutes and core muscles and that I am doing some cardio work to get rid of some of the excess weight that walking alone will not shift.

So that is my 5 months post open SDD surgery update, I hope I continue to improve and will update in a month or so.