Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Still a pain!

Hi.
Continuing from where I left off. I was saying that I began experiencing groin and knee pain. Taking off a couple of weeks helped a little. It really became a issue after a hard day of traveling through Dallas airport. Husband being an airline pilot, I get to travel non-rev. Oh the privilege of being a non rev passenger. Lets see what are the positives except for a free ride, nothing. Every other normal paying passenger gets to be at the gate an hour before scheduled departure dress as comfortable as they want. No not us, we have to show up dressed as if we are going to meet the president of America. No jeans, sweat suits, sneakers, slippers, t shirts,polo shirts with logos and shorts. We have to be there at least two hours ahead. Seventy percent of the time you do not even get on the flight. Or if you do you do not get to sit with each other. Hense no checked luggage if you want your personals with arrivals. And sometimes there is no space left in the overhead compartment and they have to check it anyway. So hopefully my description of non rev travel will be a eye opener for those who think that we are so privileged and lucky.
So moving on to the day in question that started it all. I was wearing these cool Anne Klein shoes. They were only about an inch high but they had the closed toes. After going through one long terminal we discovered that the gate had completely changed. That took us another twenty five minutes to get to. Running through the airport was not fun. I developed callous on my toes and began limping through the airport. By the time I got to my destination I was dying. The torture did not stop there. Going out to dinner that night, my energetic, husband decided to get off the bus about a mile from the restaurant that we were going to eat. I had changed to wearing a pair of boots and that did it.
Returning to Florida, I attempted to just walk on the treadmill. About two minutes into it this pain would start up in my left leg and then just spread to my knees, and groin. I decided again to take a break for a couple of weeks. On returning I decided to just take walks in my neighborhood. When I would attempted to speed up I would get a stabbing pain in my groin and followed later with this non stop ebbing pain that would run down the back of leg and into my butt. All I know was that I had to stop whatever I was doing to take away the pain. But as soon as I attempted any sort of hip flex ion and extension it would come back with a vengeance.
Finally I gave in and went to an orthopedic doctor. He ordered mri's of my knee and hip. They came back with my hip showing a possible labral tear and my knee a possible plica. I had never heard of any of these injuries before. I went home and goggled but really there was not much info out there on labral tears. And what was out there was promising. Aided with my new found discovery and my orthopedic telling me that my athletic background would help me tremendously with my recovery, I booked my surgery for January 13th 2005.
Surgery took a hour and a half longer than was told to me. Upon waking up from the anesthesia, I was told by my doc that it was a larger tear than they had anticipated but that he had got it all. He removed the floating pieces of labrum and repair the danglers. He said that my hip was in excellent condition, showing no arthritis and that I should have a full recovery.
A week later I went to physical therapy which entailed just riding the bicycle and doing static stretching followed by isolated movements for the hip. I was happy to just be moving a long. I had issues with walking up and down stairs and internal and external rotation. But all in all I was progressing. About three weeks into it, I began experiencing new issues, my left knee and operated hip began popping a lot and I had this feeling that it would give out sometimes. I became even more frustrated with this new issue with my knee because it would stop me from doing the theraphy that was so much needed for my hip to heal. I could not do any leg extensions, leg curls, and even had to take out adductor and abductor exercises. Also I began experiencing one of the pain I had before surgery. The pain running down the back of my legs. It was a nerve like pain. I could not even walk on the treadmill but I could walk on flat terrain. That was baffling to me. I eventually found another physical therapist who began doing more functional rehab with me. Eventually the pain that I would have walking on the treadmill went away. But I was still having issues with my knee. I noticed that I had a huge lump right behind the knee on the medial side. I was unsure if it was on my adductor or my hamstring. All I knew was that both those muscles were super super tight. Stretching them was so painful. But I was determined to get over this. I did everything I was told to do. I would roll on a roller every morning followed by stretching and then light cardio and then my functional exercises followed by more rolling and stretching again. I would go home and ice for twenty minutes and then later rolled and stretched again. I also began having issues with doing any abdominal work.
That is when I began getting angry. See you next week for more on this saga. Sloan

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