I was diagnosed with moderate to severe osteoarthritis of the left hip on January 2018. I thought nothing of it at the time and was just delighted to know what was causing the intermittent pain and lack of movement in my left leg that I had been experiencing. I carried on with my normal life, cycling to work (15 mile round trip), dancing like a loon at gigs and festivals and taking lots of lovely long walks. I had already stopped running after face-planting on three separate occasions in 2017. (I now know that these falls were caused by arthritic hip giving way; I'm not just clumsy.)
I love to walk. FAST! My family have always been annoyed at the speed I walk and I used to find it frustrating going out for a walk with them as they all walk so slow (I'm slower than my 78 year old Dad now!). My office backs on to Bute Park and most days I would manage a 2 mile power walk in my lunch hour. All of a sudden I was getting twinges in my hip and groin that made walking fast painful and my leg would constantly give way and send a shooting pain up my buttocks and sometimes even walking slowly was impossible and I'd struggle 200 yards in agony then have to give up and head back to my desk.
I had already started having physio in the January of 2018 (in fact it was my physio who told me to go and get an x-ray to see what was causing my pain) and I hoped that regular trips to the physio would sort me out but they told me that there was nothing more that they could do for me and just gave me some stretches to do at home.
I had booked a holiday to Vancouver and Seattle for June (to compensate for there being no Glastonbury) and planned to do a lot of walking and cycling so I started to see a chiropractor in an effort to prepare myself for two weeks of activity. I'd started getting pains in my knee, thigh, back and heel by this point.
The chiropractor did a lot of intensive work on me and off I went to Vancouver. Some days walking was so painful that I was just taking baby steps and it was agony, I'd have to find somewhere to sit and do some stretches before I could carry on. I ended up hiring a bicycle on four days simply because it was less painful than walking.
When I returned home I was in so much pain and the visits to the chiropractor didn't seem to be having much impact. So I visited my local GP in the August of 2018. She asked me what I wanted to happen. 'Magic' I said. I'm not ashamed to say that I cried in front of her and she said 'this is obviously having a negative impact on you. Do you want me to write to the consultant?' YES. YES PLEASE!
I knew that it would take around six months before I got to see the consultant and started to modify my lifestyle to try to reduce the pain. On some days I could still take a walk along the beach but the pain was so unpredictable that I never knew if I'd be able to walk 4 miles or 400 yards before it kicked in.
I was still cycling to work and that was a blessed relief, initially I was totally pain free whilst cycling, Then my knees started to gripe and once I stopped cycling for the winter things seemed to deteriorate rapidly.
The pain started to be so intense that I would feel dizzy and nauseous and it became difficult to concentrate on anything else. Sitting was painful, standing for too long would send shooting pains up my spine and walking was just plain exhausting. At 49 years old I felt like a decrepit 70 year old.
I finally saw the consultant in February 2019. He told me that my x-ray showed that I had very advanced arthritis, he could tell this because of the femoral head cysts. Which he explained meant that the surface of the head of the femur had totally worn away and that the surface was very rough. Cracks had formed and fluid was leaking into my femur and pooling there. I also had bone spurs which made side to side movement very painful. He told me that I would have to wait 12-14 months for a hip replacement op.
By now my back was totally out of kilter (as my left leg was shorter than my right) and this was causing problems in my lower back and my knee. This pain was even worse than the hip pain. I started to take Naproxen to help ease the inflammation and this seemed to take the edge off. I was no longer screaming in pain every time I changed gear in the car, just a muffled groan instead. (The downside of the Naproxen is that one of the side-effects is lack concentration, I started to make mistakes at work and become really clumsy; dropping things and banging into walls.)
Sitting at my desk in the office was often excruciating and standing up to collect things from the printer would take 10-15 seconds as straightening my leg after sitting still was torture. I started going to bed at 9.00pm as lying down was the only way I could lessen the pain. Then eventually even lying prostate stopped working. One night I only got two hours sleep because I just couldn't find a position to lie in that wasn't agonising.
I had been looking forward to festival season starting but it was dawning on me that my body just wasn't going to be able to cope with 10 days at Glastonbury (I work for the recycling crew, so arrive on the Sunday and leave on the Tuesday). So I had to send an e-mail to my boss explaining that I wouldn't be able to attend this year, I cried the whole time I was typing it and I still can't believe I'm not going.
Fast forward to last Saturday and after a few more visits to the hospital for all of the pre-admissions checks I eventually received the best letter ever advising me that my hip replacement operation was scheduled for May 24th. Whoop, whoop! I would have danced around the kitchen if I was capable. God love the NHS. Less than one year from crying in my doctor's surgery I was on my way to getting fixed.
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