progress

Apr 24, 2012

I have been down since February 20. I have left my house on Wednesdays for iFamily and Fridays for gym and that is pretty much all. I have taught my classes lying down on a couch or a cheese and have been in large amounts of pain while doing it. I have run my home from a horizontal position for the past 9 weeks.

It has been really, really hard.

For the first five weeks we believed I had a stress fracture in my acetabulum. Then my friends dragged me to an MRI with Arthrogram and we found out I have a labral tear. Unfortunately, that was not good news as surgery and months of recovery time (and months of waiting time for the surgery) are not great options…surgery is expensive and I do not have health insurance, surgery would be done in SLC – quite a ways from my home, it can’t be done until August, which means I will be down till the New Year. Nuts, really. The more I thought about it, the more I felt there had to be another solution. I started researching all night long and found a treatment called Prolozone and decided to give it a try. Prolozone is an injection of ozone, vitamins, and minerals into the injury site and it is supposed to actually heal torn and damaged tissue. After researching it ad nauseum, I scheduled my appointment for last Wednesday.

I was pretty much scared to death of the injection, but I decided I was strong and brave and could do hard things. Besides all that, I had to admit I was really, really desperate to avoid surgery and surely some injections were a MUCH better option. Now, I am not so sure!

I had been told it would burn really badly for about 5 seconds. I decided to prepare myself for 2 minutes of pain to be on the safe side. The injection did hurt…badly. But what hurt worse was the pain coursing through my hip socket, gluteus maximus, sacral-illiac ridge, and up and down my leg. It felt as though someone was pulling my patella off, yanking my little toe out of my body, and that my body would never, ever, stop shaking. This intense, overwhelming level of pain, lasted for 21 minutes, which was a heck of a lot longer than I had prepared for. When it finally dissipated, it was time for the injection right into the labrum. I was basically terrified. Courage from somewhere deep in my bones welled up and I agreed to move forward. This injection was just as bad as the first, but the pain didn’t last, it subsided within about 90 seconds, which was totally doable.

Afterwards, it took about 30 minutes for my blood pressure to come back up enough for me to get off the table. It felt like my entire right side of my body was dead and buried about 5 stories below the rest of me. Very odd sensation.

Walking out of the office was excruciating. I could only move my leg about one inch at a time, so it took us a long while to make it to the car. The rest of the day was pretty bad as well. Lots of pain, lots of light-headedness, lots of white skin, lots of “I-don’t-know-if-I-will-ever-stop-hurting”, lots of fear.

Thursday was more of the same.

Friday I could walk.

Saturday I could walk better and even ventured to the park with my family to lay down on a blanket in the sun.

Sunday I was pretty sore, but still walking and I ventured to church to partake of the sacrament.

Monday I was walking pretty darn speedily and even wrestled my bike trailer into my mom’s car so my sister can borrow it for the summer. Pretty amazing, eh?

And today? Today I am still walking. And I am sitting at my computer right this minute. And I am not dying in pain.

So, I think this is progress. Huge amounts of progress. I still don’t know if I have enough courage to go back next week for the next round of injections, but I am working on building it up.