Growing old

So, way back when, I solicited topics for further discussion. One request was to "hear more about the hip". Since it's possible that there are readers (hey, anything's possible) who know nothing about this, I'll try to start from the beginning.

I guess for a couple of years now, I've started having pain in my right hip. As is my tendency, I ignored it for a long while. Knees hurt, hip hurt, whatever, no big deal. Well, the pain started to get worse ... not in a particularly incapacitating sort of way, but just in an "wow, maybe I shouldn't have fenced that last bout" kind of way. It hurt a lot if I was out walking for any extended period of time, or if I was out in cold weather. And, since I am currently gainfully employed with insurance benefits, I decided that maybe it was time for it to get looked at.

I went to see an orthopedist, who poked and prodded a bit. Of course, it behaved perfectly. They took x-rays. Everything looked normal. Next step, MRI. But not just any old MRI -- one with an arthrogram, which means injecting a contrast solution into the hip joint so that those bits show up clearer. I do not recommend this activity. The MRI itself wasn't as bad as I feared (apparently, I am not claustrophobic), but that damn shot was painful, and my hip hurt for about a week afterward. It didn't help that they managed to hit a nerve while they were in there, I imagine.

What the MRI told us is that I have "lost" a good bit of the cartilage that ought to be padding my hip joint. We are all bewildered as to how that happened. The doctors (I ended up seeing a second one, as well) keep asking if there's been any sort of trauma or injury. There hasn't. I am apparently too young for a hip replacement, and one of the doctors actually said "this isn't the kind of thing we do a replacement for." However, there's not really a fix. I got a lot of noise about pain management...but I decided that a steady regimen of Aleve and/or cortisone shots don't really appeal to me at this point in my life, for various reasons. One doctor said physical therapy wouldn't really help, the other said it might, so I might look into that at a later point.

For now, I'm just limping along. I'm sort of learning what sets it off and what doesn't ... unfortunately, exercising 6 days a week seems to be problematic. It was pointed out to me that loss of cartilage with resulting bone contact, inflammation, and pain is essentially arthritis. So, I've got an arthritic hip at the age of 33. Apparently, that's fairly unusual for someone under the age of 65. But what can you do? It's not as though I can do something that will bring about the return of that cartilage. I plan on just keeping on and seeing what happens later. I might go back to another orthopedist at some point, just to see if they have anything different to say. And maybe, when I'm old enough, they'll replace the sucker. I have to admit, I'm kind of hoping for that. I totally want to be that 50 year old vet fencer with the bionic hip.