So, you're been diagnosed with hip dysplasia and they send you off to get a "Hip Arthrogram MRI". This recently happened to me. No one told me what to expect. Here's the deal. I was sent to a hospital for this procedure. The arthrogram comes first, the MRI second. If you're claustrophobic, you might want to consider a sedative for the MRI portion of this event. First, the arthrogram. Basically, in a hip arthrogram, they will stick a needle in your hip and inject dye. First, I was stripped and put in a hospital gown. Then I had to lie down on a big table with an x-ray machine lookin' thing above it. Then, my joint was marked with a marker and the whole area was liberally painted with betadine. Your knickers will be destroyed ladies, betadine stains. Then, an anesthetic was injected into my hip area. This just pinches a little. While the anesthetic takes effect, they will mix up a little dye/lidocaine cocktail to inject into the hip joint. This injec
Well, it's been 6 months since my RPAO. Here's the update: I can now walk MILES at a time. My right side is still sore and feels kind of bruised. I have partial numbness over the entire front and side of my right hip, but this is way better than immediately post-op when I had total numbness in a large percentage of the area. My left side is still giving me trouble, but only very sporadically. In the last few weeks, my right side has also given me a bit of trouble, but not very often and not for very long. I STILL can't sleep on my right side with making the bruised feeling more intense. BTW, I have 5 screws in the right hip and my surgeon gives me funny looks when I ask about screw removal. I feel fairly certain that I will have to do the left side as well, but hopefully its not for at least a few years. That's about it. There's really nothing else to say. I absolutely advocate the surgery. I have no regrets about it. you can e-mail me with
So its been a while since my last post. I thought I'd share what's been going on. I finished culinary school. I worked for about a year as a part time pastry cook (full time was too hard on the hips). After a year I realized that my hips were going to break and crumble into dust, or so it felt, if I continued with the pastry work. And after some swallowing of pride and bitter pills (figuratively, of course), I decided to do some searching and find another avenue, career, path, etc. In May I finished my first semester of grad school for my Masters of Library and Information Science. Library work has always been something that interested me and you can't walk in our house for books, so it seemed a natural fit. I love it. I even started volunteering at the local library 2 days a week. But the hips kept getting worse, especially in the last 6 months or so. Oh, and I've lost my health insurance again! I will be getting it back in the fall through school, but it will