So… I’ve been a bit missing-in-action on social media for these past few weeks, but for good reason. I went under the knife!… Again!
Remember two years ago?! Well, on November 21st, 2012, I had hip surgery to repair a torn labrum, shave off a couple of bone spurs on the head of my femur, and shave off the front part of my hip socket. That started me off on the biggest challenge I’ve ever faced: to recover from hip surgery in time to represent my country internationally in two sports – rugby and bobsledding – within the year following my surgery, with the ultimate goals to represent Canada at the Rugby Sevens World Cup in Moscow in June 2013, and to compete at the Winter Olympics in Sochi in February 2014.
Well, that proved successful! 😉 But the imaging for my surgery two years ago revealed that my other hip (the left one) also had quite a bit of damage. I almost decided to have both hips surgically repaired at the same time (within two weeks), but chose not to as I was only experiencing pain in my right hip at the time, and it would have significantly increased my recovery time. And my goals for the next year had extremely tight (highly implausible) timelines already!
Well, this past summer I started getting pain in my left hip, and more imaging confirmed the damage. It was actually way worse than my other hip had been. So I went under the knife three weeks ago on November 5th, 2014. This time, however, the surgeon (Dr. Ivan Wong, originally from Summerside, PEI) had a lot more work to do! Just like he did with my first hip, he repaired my labrum (which this time was torn in two places, and was so damaged that it was “shredded”), shaved the bone spur off the head of my femur and the front part of my hip socket. But this time, he also had to repair a ruptured ligament, fish out a rogue piece of cartilage (that had mysteriously come off the back part of the head of my femur), did a micro-fracture into the bone to release stem cells, and then injected CarGel into the joint – a gel that acts as a scaffolding to protect the stem cells while they work to regenerate my own cartilage. Crazy, right?! CarGel has been used for cartilage repair in knee surgeries and hip surgeries in Europe, but I am the first person in Canada to get it done in the hip!
Exciting? Well… that’s tough to say at this point. So far, it’s a much more frustrating post-op than last time! Last time, I was weight bearing the same day of surgery and off my crutches after a week. But because of the Cargel, I’m not allowed to weight bear for six weeks!!! Crutches for SIX weeks!!! And to top it all off, I got the flu one week post surgery, and have been fighting it for the past two weeks. It was awful! But I’m finally starting to feel back to my normal self, except the fact that my left (surgical) leg has atrophied so much that it’s quite a bit smaller than my other leg… and I’m only at the halfway point before I can walk again without crutches!
Oh well… not much I can do about it now except to stay positive, and do everything I can to maintain the strength and mobility that I have currently, until the point at which I can start strengthening again in a few weeks. It does feel quite strange to be rehabbing without an urgent athletic goal in mind, so I will rehab with the idea that if/when a new goal arises, I will be as ready as I can be!
Don’t wish me luck with my rehab. Wish me perspective and perseverance! 😉
Smiles….
Heather
