Well, here we go again.
I am disabled. Again.
This time it’s the right hip instead of the left hip.
This time I am almost forty.
And this time I have three young children.
How did I get here? How did I go from living my regular life to disabled?
It's been a journey but not a particularly painful or arduous journey. I’ve been having pain on and off in my right hip for about a
year. An ultrasound showed some sort of generalized edema and the radiologist
recommended a follow-up MRI. My GP wanted to wait for the MRI results before consulting the orthopedic surgeon, but having lived through this process before
I really advocated for a surgical consult. She put in the consult and I got an
MRI appointment 10 months in the future and just kind of lived my life. The
pain wasn’t really that bad; a full shift at the Rockyview would leave me tired and sore, but it wasn’t debilitating pain. I learned to just live
within some limitations, got a new job that required less walking and less physical pushing and pulling, and life was so busy that I just kind of forgot about my congenital hip dysplasia. Life is very busy. I work a 0.7 as a nurse and my brain is constantly full of the minutiae of family life: there are school drop
offs and school pick-ups, coordinating carpools, playdates, soccer, music classes, birthday parties, figuring out dinner five nights a week; I’m president of my daughter’s
preschool, treasurer of the choir I sing, and we memorize all of our
music; I like to bake a fancy dessert every Sunday and I sew all the time. It is busy.
My MRI finally happened at 10:30 pm on a Sunday night in
March. I was called back for another MRI a week later. That can’t be good,
right? To wait ten months for an MRI but get a follow-up MRI a week later? This
MRI was an arthrogram: under x-ray, the radiologist inserted a very large
needle into my hip and filled the joint with contrast dye before wheeling me to
the MRI machine for another looksie at what was going on. It was an unpleasant
experience. The MRI results showed: borderline/mild hip acetabular dysplasia,
moderate degeneration of the anterior and anterosuperior labrum and degeneration
and partial-thickness intrasubstance tear of the superior labrum, moderate to high
grade partial thickness tear of the posterior half of the ligamentum teres, the
possibility of hip microinstability, mild tendonitis of the right
semimembranosus, and a low signal intremedullary bone lesion within the distal
right femoral dimetaphysis.
So not great news.
What does all that jargon actually mean? In my non-doctor brain I think those big words mean that the hip joint isn’t
sitting flush so it’s chewing up all of the ligaments and tendons. The hip
socket is like an angry little Pac-Man ravenous for the delicious taste of soft
tissue. Making me disabled. Again.
Since the arthroscopy my pain has worsened considerably. I don’t think
the pain is worse because of the procedure; I think the nature of having all
these tears in my hip is that they are just going to get bigger and start
hurting more the bigger they get.
I went on medical leave last week. I worked two days in a
row and spent the evening curled up in a ball crying because of the pain. It
was the right thing to do. There’s no point in waiting until I’m in 10/10 pain
all of the time before going off of work. I can’t work all day and come home and be
exhausted and in pain and having nothing left to give my family.
Intellectually I know that admitting I have a disability is the right thing to do. If anyone told me, as a nurse, that they had tears
in the ligaments of their hip and it hurt to walk and their hip throbbed and
kept them awake all night and they were worried about further damaging their
hip with walking then I would absolutely tell them not to come in to work and take it easy. But
it’s way harder to show that understanding and kindness to myself.
I don’t want to go on disability again. I don’t want to have
to think about how many steps I can take in the day – whether or not I can go
upstairs to brush the kids teeth or just stay on the main floor. I don’t want
to calculate how much Tylenol and Advil I’ve taken and if I can have any more
and if I need to start on something stronger because I don’t want to be foggy
and I need to drive my kids to school. I don’t want to use my crutch and have
people ask me how I hurt myself and have this blank look on their face when I
say I have congenital hip dysplasia because no one has congenital hip dysplasia.
I don’t want to give up my job. Frankly, being at home with
the kids full-time is really challenging and demanding. But more than that I
love my job. I’m almost a year into my job at a long-term care center and I
love my residents. I love the work I do; my work matters and I know I’m really
good at it and make a difference. And I don’t want to hand that off to another
nurse who will probably do a good job but not do it the same way that I do. It’s
nice to feel needed and valued and I get that validation at work. And I love my
old people and I miss them already.
I’m grieving. I’m grieving giving up my job and my lack of
mobility. I’m grieving being an active mom and being able to just go to the
playground on a whim. I’m grieving being a dependent partner. Dan says he
doesn’t mind having to unload the dishwasher and cook dinner and all those thousand
household tasks that cause me pain but I don’t want to see him do everything
while I sit on the couch and feel sorry for myself.
I’m sad.
This sucks.
I see the surgeon at the end of May and I don’t know what
the course of action will be. I would imagine there will be some sort of surgery,
but I have no idea what kind of surgery I will need or what the timeline will
be and what my recovery will be and how long my life will be on pause.
So I am going to feel sad and feel sorry for myself and really revel in the overall terribleness of this entire situation. And then I am going to figure out what's for dinner and pick-up my daughter from preschool because that's life, and as my grandmother used to say and I repeatedly say to my children, things are tough all over. And we will get through this. One gimpy hip at a time.
