mystery solved!

These past 2 weeks we've been learning about musculoskeletal pathologies that we'll be dealing with in ortho settings. I was kind of excited to learn all this stuff because ortho is probably what I'll end up in. But, I was also hoping to finally figure out what the heck is wrong with my hip.

And the answer is...I have torn the labrum in my hip and have early signs of osteoarthritis. While I'm not exactly all too thrilled about the OA starting, I'm at least satisfied to know what the heck is wrong with me. Answers, no matter what they are, are always good things to have. The funny thing was that when I told our professor (good 'ol Dr. Wong) what I had figured out, the first thing he said was..."You were a dancer...am I right?" Man that guy is smart!

So for a little show and tell of the knowledge I've recently gained...

The labrum is some cartilage that lines the joint, providing stability and cushioning while increasing the contact surface area. Labrum tears are common with activities involving repetitive pivoting movements or repetitive hip flexion...can you say Irish dancing??? They also are usually not picked up on MRI's, no matter how grueling and painful they are when you get the dye injected, depending on the location of where they occur. Especially where mine probably is (in the front of my hip), there are too many structures to go through, and you need the hip moving in order to expose it...not an option when performing an MRI. Instead, diagnostic ultrasound is needed, a machine many clinicians do not know how to use well enough to find the tear. It is also common with these patients to have seen multiple health care providers without any success...this is starting to sound all too familiar! Finally, there is clicking/clunking in the hip and pain comes on with any activity. If the tear is bad enough, they will perform surgery and remove/repair the damaged tissue, and option that I am not all that interested in at the moment. Anyway, if you want to know more you can google it. I don't want to bore you all.

Now for the OA. OA in the hip is often related to a previous injury or trauma (see above). It also is tied in with the weather, which if you have been around me, you know that I can tell you when the weather is changing b/c my hip hurts like crazy and is swollen. There are lots of other signs, which most of which I don't have...yet. Hence the early stages of OA thing.

So while this was kind of a yay-boo situation, I'm glad to know what's wrong with me. This has been the mysterious problem since my senior year of HS, and it's been driving me nuts that no one could figure out what's wrong with me. Without an official diagnostic ultrasound, I can't say 100% sure that I have a torn labrum, but with the amount of symptoms that are a perfect match, I'm saying that's what it is. And of course, I don't know how to fix this yet...that comes later. :) So stay tuned for how I'm going to fix myself!