RPAO – 4 week birthday!

Yay!

Yesterday was RPAO’s 4 week birthday – and, heavens, was I glad to have got there because it meant that I could start 50% weight-bearing!  And, guess what?  My leg didn’t fall off!!!!!  The way things have gone for the past 4 weeks, it wouldn’t have surprised me in the slightest, lol!  I have been going for regular hydro and it still clunks, but it is better.  And when I WALK bearing weight, it doesn’t CLUNK!!!!  Just feels a little ‘loose’ and ‘uncoordinated’ if that makes sense – which I am attributing to lack of muscle.  I walked up and down in the pool, side to side, and backwards, but if I try to squat or swing my leg side to side, there it goes again.  Physio has said ‘No Clunking’ so we have to stop as soon as it clunks, which is bloody frustrating because I feel like I am doing a big, fat NOTHING in there, but, hey ho, I am sure we will get there eventually.

Yesterday I had the biggest ever downer – surprising considering I was allowed to do the weight-bearing thing.  Slept till 12.45 p.m. then watched t.v. all afternoon like a zombie, fell asleep in the car going to pick our son up from his school bus, and then slept soundly all night!  Weird!  But today am feeling much more myself and have started making my Christmas cards – finally!

Anyway, here is my scar at 4 weeks – taken yesterday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Now this is more like it!

Well,  firstly, I am feeling much, much better, brighter and more alive!  I went to see Mr Witt on Monday, and had xrays which showed that nothing had moved, everything was where it was supposed to be and that I had nothing to worry about.  All that being said, my brain was still saying “Okay, so what’s making the clunking, and what’s making that cricket ball feeling?”.  He THINKS (not sure) that the clunking is still the tendon, but he thinks it is the illiopsoas tendon (another story about that later), and he THINKS that the cricket ball is actually a haematoma (blood clot) on a muscle (adductor area).  So I came away feeling a lot better and more at peace – there was a smile on my face! Yay!  First one for nearly 3 weeks!

Fast forward to yesterday:  Went to hydro and physio had hand on illiopsoas tendon whilst I was doing exercises very gently.  Hip is gaily clunking and clicking.  “It’s definitely not the illiopsoas as I have my hand on it, and I can feel the clunking resonating through it, but it is definitely not IT doing  the clunking!”  So we think it is actually the adductors not working properly, and they are causing the femur to not track smoothly in the socket.  So … I am doing very gentle, with minimal movement, exercises which as Karen the physio said, I will be bored to tears in no time, but am just going to have to put up with it!

Fast forward to today: I went again today, and a funny thing has happened.  For most of the afternoon post hydrotherapy MY HIP HASN’T CLUNKED!!!!!  How weird is that?  I am not going to say too much or say it too loudly, but I feel that I might, just might, have turned a corner.

Anyway, I promised you a picture of LPAO which is now 6 months old tomorrow and this is what it looks like!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please excuse the clothing marks etc.  But it just shows that these things get to look pretty darn good in quite a short amount of time.

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Scars!

Well, this is just a quickie to upload photos taken of RPAO’s scars.  Just to show how they reduce in size.  I will take one of my LPAO scar tomorrow, just so’s you can all see how insignificant it now is.  This might help some who are about to go through this for the first time.  I hope so anyway – hope it doesn’t scare the crap out of you!

RPAO – just a couple of hours old!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RPAO – 1 week post-op

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RPAO – 3 weeks post-op

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So …!

I have been a little quiet of late, which is unusual for me!  To cut a long story short, I have, since coming out of the anesthetic, been experiencing lots of clunking and clicking.  Some of it painful, some of it not.

This morning I had an on-land physio assessment to determine what is going on.  Whilst she was gently manouvering my leg about it clunked – this was immediately diagnosed as ‘an unstable hip’.  Looks like my adductor muscles have gone on holiday – basically they have just decided post-op not to work (well, that’s what we are hoping, anyway!).  All I can say is that I hope that they are bloody well enjoying their little vacation, because I am not!  My physio is contacting Mr Witt to discuss, but feels that we should spend the next two weeks really working on the adductors to try to get them stronger, and in that way, hopefully stabilize the hip.

So here’s hoping!

To say that I am down is a bit of an understatement, but then LPAO did recover rather swimmingly, so I had prepared myself for a not so gentle ride, but, admittedly, I didn’t expect it to go quite like this.

I will keep you all posted. xx

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