Wednesday, August 31, 2011

A couple more diagnosis for my complex hip problem

I have femoral retroversion.  This is when the femur is turned the wrong way.  Only about 1/5000 babies are born with femoral retroversion.  I think I should buy a lotto ticket this week.  Femoral retroversion causes my foot to turn out.  I also have a huge range of motion when my hip is turned out, for example sitting cross-legged is easy-peasy for me.  In the case of my hip turning in I have very little range of motion. For example, I cannot sit in a W formation.

Someone with femoral retroversion could not sit like this.

The surgery to correct this involves an  open surgery where a huge, giant, long incision is made  down the top of the thigh.  The femur is broken and then pinned back together.  The surgery sounds scary and nasty.  I am going to talk to a surgeon about whether he thinks I will need a surgery to correct my retroversion.   I would rather just do one aggressive surgery to correct everything at once.  That includes the retroversion, impingement. blister and labral tears.  There is a possibility that if I just I have the impingement surgery, although I will still have femoral retroversion, I will no longer be in severe pain.  Another possibility is that the surgeon could over-correct the retroversion, just leaving me with the opposite problem.

A second diagnosis I talked about previously is the blister in my labrum.  The labrum has come detached in the middle of my acetabulum, like a blister.

The red circle would be the blister
Some surgeons treat this blister with a procedure called microfracturing.  With this procedure your body can grow new cartilage.  Some surgeons shave down the blister, however this damages cartilage cells.  Other surgeons make a glue out of your own blood then glue the blister back down.  It is unknown how long the glue lasts.  The other option is to ignore the blister.  Frankly, I don't like this option.  I want to nip all my pain sources in the butt at once.  I am so sick and tired of being in constant, debilitating pain.

Okay, just wanted to keep you up to date on the growing complexity of my hip problem.


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