Hi everyone,
I am a 24 year old dealing with some pretty bad right hip pain. I guess I should give the details of my story.
Back in college, I used to play a lot of basketball. Was in the best shape of my life by jogging/playing basketball, and then one day playing flag football of all things I blew out my right hip. When extending for a pass I felt this enormous pop in my right hip. I hit the ground with horrible hip and groin pain, and was sore for an entire 2 weeks. I never was the same -- tried getting back into hoops but never had the push, and my hip got stiff/sore/gave me sharp pains minutes into a game. My internal rotation completely disappeared.
After 2 years of constant and worsening pain, and tired of my sports med talk telling me it was "just tendinitis", I finally saw a hip arthroscopy doc. Turns out I had miserable FAI on my right hip, and the MRA showed a gigantic labral tear in the right hip (though good joint space on x-ray). Had my right hip scoped in January 2011, and they did their best to recontour my hip joint (cam and pincer impingement), repair what was left of the poor labrum, and unfortunately had to microfracture a 7mmx7mm articular cartilage defect I had in my acetabulum. Unfortunately, my post-op protocol was awful, as the doc/PT told me that for the 6 weeks on crutches I should essentially do nothing. So I really had little to no movement (makes me think now obviously that post-op scar tissue is an issue). My recovery from this surgery was awful. Constant hip pain -- supertight hip flexors, persistent joint pain and this weird clicking/crunching in my joint that I did not have pre-surgery. I got the tight musculature under control with ART/shockwave therapy -- that in fact made me feel good enough to try and get back into jogging after 8 months. I'd feel pretty good while running, but the crunching and clicking pain in the joint never went away (regardless if I was in my running routine or not, the joint always crunches these days, and it's very painful). Sitting in a chair is OK, but getting up is dreadful because I get that huge and painful crunch. I stand a lot for my school/job, and anytime I move the leg after standing in one position for awhile, I get that awful pop. While I may be able to do some jogging (with some admittedly awful stiffness/sharp pains later, basketball is completely out of the question, no way I could do it with this hip). It's getting to the point where it's just depressing these days. I'd obviously take a resolution of the pain/mechanical symptoms alone, but I'm 24 and want to get back into jogging and basketball. It's really depressing to see all these other 24 year olds around me going for runs, shooting hoops, and just being active. I feel 24 with the exception of my right hip, which I feel belongs in some 80 year old man.
Anyways, I've tried everything. Like I said, shockwave therapy and ART does help with the surrounding soft tissues, but I think as long as the joint is screwed up, this stuff keeps recurring. PT helps, but I've tried it all and I can't do the active things I want to do. I even tried dextrose prolotherapy and bone marrow injections to the right hip (taken from my tibia -- with the "hope" that the mesenchymal stem cells would repair the defect, as the microfracture is originally intended to do) from the prolo expert (Dr. Ross Hauser), and after 5 sessions (4 of those bone marrow -- very expensive), I can safely say I'm no better. I may still see if Dr. Hauser has anything up his sleeve (PRP, stem cells from fat, concentrating the bone marrow), but I'm beginning to think repeat arthroscopy to remove scar tissue/adhesions, or just jumping to a BHR. I know I'm super young, so of course I'd like to avoid a replaced joint at this age but I'm starting to get frustrated, exhausting every other option. Also, I'm in medical school at the moment (starting 1st year in August) so I can't really have an arthroscopy/resurfacing done until next summer when I get 6 weeks off.
I've looked on this forum, and have found a couple people near my age facing similar problems. Is 24 too young to be getting a BHR? If someone like me got a BHR and ran/played hoops a couple times a week, how long would that be anticipated to last? If I had all the time in the world, I might be willing to try an arthroscopy next summer to see if removing scar tissue/adhesions could help, but I'm starting to think my pain is more related to a failed microfracture/lack of cartilage (and I really don't want to have go through all the pain of an arthroscopy again just to have it fail/do nothing/make matters worse). To get a resurfacing, do docs require that all your cartilage essentially be depleted? At the time of the scope, I only had that one bad defect, and the rest looked good, but I'm still in a lot of pain and just want to get back to an active life. My x-rays still show normal joint space -- do docs not do BHRs on people like me then? My MRIs showed more evidence of osteoarthritis. Assuming I bypassed further scopes and wanted to get a BHR next summer, is 6 weeks enough time for me to recover enough so that I can go back to school after that? I would want to have any scope/BHR done in the USA, and I gather that two of the best are Dr. Su in NYC and Dr. Gross in SC -- do they take e-mails? I apologize for the length, but I feel like my early 20s passed and I wasn't able to do the active things I love doing -- and I don't want my later 20s to be more of the same. Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks!
-Brian
Topic: Too Young for BHR? (Read 2135 times)
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