I had the labral repair and while it helped a bit, it never totally relieved my pain. And from my best point at about 6 months post op, my pain level steadily increased until I had no choice but go for the THR. I will add, though, that I was in my early 50’s and not the best candidate for the scope.
I’m feeling crushed: my hip had been feeling pretty great with the PT. Have been swimming and riding a pony bareback at the walk with minimal pain. Just before my follow-up with the ortho my friend offered me her horse to walk around on, and she mentioned I could trot if I felt like it. Was feeling pretty good! And I figured the doc was likely to clear me to ride anyway. So I trotted and did a little bit of canter for maybe 10-15 minutes. EXTREME, deep hip pain afterward, plus bad back pain/stiffness and a sharp pain in my foot (which has lasted almost a week now). Ortho now recommends an injection and then possible surgery. He said he’d normally just recommend that I stop riding, but he could tell it was important to me. So sad.
I’m not convinced that being young and active and fit is a good thing prior to this surgery. Stronger hip muscles = more force needed for distraction? More force = more damage? Dunno. But 10 weeks post op is really, really, really soon to be doing something like jogging.
Absolutely do what you can to reduce your pain and enjoy your time with your horse. Where are you hurting? Flexors? Joint? Glutes? And by now, you KNOW what PT you need to be doing. Reduce the appointments, just do your exercises. Do you feel like it’s helping at all? If not, STOP, and find someone different.
[QUOTE=Simkie;8675513]
I’m not convinced that being young and active and fit is a good thing prior to this surgery. Stronger hip muscles = more force needed for distraction? More force = more damage? Dunno. But 10 weeks post op is really, really, really soon to be doing something like jogging.
Absolutely do what you can to reduce your pain and enjoy your time with your horse. Where are you hurting? Flexors? Joint? Glutes? And by now, you KNOW what PT you need to be doing. Reduce the appointments, just do your exercises. Do you feel like it’s helping at all? If not, STOP, and find someone different.[/QUOTE]
I completely trust my surgeon and my PT was just following the surgeons schedule.
The jogging was really just like 10 seconds of slow slow jog (walking is almost faster) so it’s not like I was off running a couple miles.
I guess I inflamed all of the muscles and the capsule. A steroid pack and backing off of a lot of things helped calm everything down.
My surgeon has told me to stop if I feel pain. I’m used to just dealing with pain and powering on (which is one reason why my hip got so messed up)
Since it is workers comp, I can’t cut back on the appointments. I get nasty calls from the workers comp adjusters.
I just have to suck it up and behave, which is hard, but I’m doing.
Sorry to hear your having a hard time getting back into running Gucci. I was doing really well with it, now 7 months post op, and then ended up tweaking a knee. I rested that and backed off, and then was back to it with no problem. Until a week and a half ago. SO and I went for a bike ride, longest one yet, and then I went to ride the horse (also longest one yet). Well I don’t know exactly what I did but I’ve been achey and ouchy ever since. Worse on work days since I’m on my feet all day, though it’s still nowhere near like the pain before sx but I had just started to get used to being almost pain free. Sigh. Hoping I just inflamed the capsule and muscles at this point. I’ve been icing, using my STIM machine and taking anti inflammatory in the mean time.
Some of you folks with ongoing hip pain (and this means you lurkers, especially) might be interested to read about an under-diagnosed muscle/tendon syndrome which is emerging as a prevalent condition in many athletic middle-aged females:
http://dralisongrimaldi.com/resources/lateral-hip-pain-mechanisms-and-management/
This miserable beast is capable of causing as much pain and disability as end-stage osteoarthritis of the hip; and it’s very commonly missed cold by orthos as they are usually a hammer in search of a nail.
If your hip pain is primarily lateral rather than in your groin, you might wish to pursue the tests pertaining to this diagnosis. If positive, they could save you from unnecessary surgeries. Unfortunately, however, no study has yet produced a treatment which is unequivocally beneficial.
But it’s an interesting iron in the fire.
Funny you mention that, Lady E–I ran across that article (or one like it) earlier this week and emailed my sports medicine specialist about the possibility. He said no, at least not for the bulk of my pain, and the MRI shows no indication. But considering some of my pain closely follows the glut min trigger points, he would be happy to inject and we can see what that does. So I’ll report back on that.
faller-offer, I’m super curious about your foot pain. Where does it hurt? I have foot pain that I think is tied to my hip stuff, too!
Interesting - visited my old Doc in Houston this week. He uses HA w/ cortisone a LOT. Said that he had never seen it NOT help, altho time frame on ‘help’ is variable.
He said some people only get a few months, but he has had people get relief for up to several years from a single injection…
I also read something from Cornell that indicated that the reason that studies re: HA in the joint are so all over the place is that how effective it is depends on whether you still have another lubricant molecule in there or not. No way to tell at present - so if you haven’t tried the HA it’s worth a shot.
[QUOTE=Simkie;8679389]
faller-offer, I’m super curious about your foot pain. Where does it hurt? I have foot pain that I think is tied to my hip stuff, too![/QUOTE]
Yeah, it’s strange and my PT and ortho are both a bit confused by it. When I’m riding, I get some sensation/slight pain and numbness. After riding (for a week almost) I have sharp pain in my mid-foot, mostly underneath but some on the top/side of my foot. This pain is actually worse than my hip pain, for the most part. My PT thought it was either a low back issue or piriformis syndrome. We’re going to see which, if any, symptoms are relieved by the injection, and if it’s still there get some imaging done of my back.
What’s your foot issue like?
I have pain in my heel–bottom of the foot, medial, just on the edge before the arch. Didn’t tie it to my hip at all and went to the doc for heel pain. There’s a tiny little spur or something there, they talked about plantar fasciitis…but by that time I was really pretty doctored out and put it on the “ignore” list.
Until I had my hips blocked for the PRP injections and–whoa!–the heel pain went away! Came raging back when the block wore off but wow. Had NO inkling that it was related at all until then.
I’ve been doing some piriformis/glute minimus stretching and am curious to see if that helps with the foot stuff. Also have appt with my sport medicine guy later this month, and he mentioned injecting the glute minimus trigger points, which I am SUPER excited about.
That’s really interesting Simkie. I kinda hope mine ends up being “just” a hip thing, because a disc problem would be worse to deal with, I think. My foot pain definitely does flare up when my PT presses on my piriformis muscle area, so it seems likely that that’s all it is. I guess when I ride I overtighten it? By trying to use my seat and doing it wrong, maybe?
Let me know about the injections!
I posted on OT about my piriformis syndrome symptoms–I’ve had all sorts of MRIs and xrays and nerve conduction tests to eliminate disc issues and to pinpoint my problem. I have awful hip pain-- thought to be gluteal tendonitis. I have numbness and nerve pain down my right leg into my heel, gets worse upon exercise (walking/hiking/bike riding) and better with rest. Stretching my piriformis or hip in PT simply lights it all up–hence the piriformis syndrome diagnosis. Lady Eboshi–that article is very interesting! Sort of my problem. Hm. I need a better doctor though–I feel like I’m not getting anywhere. Acupuncture is on my agenda though.
Calvincrowe, I was just wondering about diagnosis and treatment of soft tissue issues. What you’re experiencing sounds kinda like my deal too. (The block for my cortisone injection yesterday did not resolve my foot pain, so I’ve started thinking more about piriformis syndrome.) Are there some specific tests for tendonitis and muscle syndromes, or is it more of a guessing game?
Seems like a process of elimination game–I had a series of MRIs, nerve conduction, etc. followed by PT. It is just now that we’ve eliminated all the other options (clean disks, no OA, nothing obvious with bones) that we are settling on piriformis as the culprit. I’m almost used to the heel pain, zingy leg thing now. The PT for the tendonitis has worked very well, but that’s just made the piri syndrome symptoms come to the forefront I think. The lift/orthotic is helping…slowly which makes me happy. Now I need two or three more so I don’t have to keep pulling it out of one shoe and stuffing it in another, but at $50/pair and I only need one…sigh. Anyway, I need to find the physiatrist or whatever the other posters raved about. Pretty sure my regular practice doesn’t have them…
Feel ya calvincrowe.
It’s kinda funny how you can get so used to the pain. When I had my hip blocked for my injection, I was surprised to have no pain there! Like I legitimately thought I didn’t have any pain that day until it wasn’t there anymore.
I discovered something interesting today. I rode totally pain free in my dressage saddle. I had been avoiding it, opting for my CC instead thinking the wider twist would aggrate my hip more. Quite the opposite. My old school County Competitor (circa 92ish) really put my hip in a nice solid position and no pain after so far. Riding in my Dominus CC usually leaves me feeling weaker on the right side while riding and gives me pain as soon as my feet hit the ground after.
So I guess I’ll be searching for a new saddle shortly, and trying to find a CC that fits me like my dressage saddle. Or maybe just switching to an all purpose if I have to.
Can anybody ride in ‘real’ riding boots? I have been riding in a pair of Keens that are falling apart - and REALLLY marginal in my stirrups anyhow.
Got a pair of Ariat Terrains and want to cry after about 3 steps. Tried a twisted-x chukka that has a slightly lower heel - still bad.
I’ve been wondering if I take a file to the heel and round it off some if that might help…
Cross fingers - my Terrains don’t cause any additional pain. I hope you find some boots to suit you, Toller.
What’s causing your pain with the boots, toller? I don’t think I have that issue!
If it’s the corner of the heel, maybe a pair of western boots with an underslung walking heel would be okay? Check this article for some discussion: http://www.bootedmanblog.com/?p=1282
right now i can’t really tell if it’s the corner in the back, or if the corner at the front of the heel doesn’t allow the foot to ‘roll’ forward.
when i take a step i feel a grinding sensation all across the front of the hip.
thinking about taking the boots to my PT eval tomorrow and see what they think…
