You're In

I am 85% type A personality. All of my other type A 'planners' our there or anyone who knows one will appreciate this: I tend to plan for all contingencies. While adhering to a schedule or plan certainly makes me very happy, accomodating last minute changes or a shake up to the normal routine doesn't bother me in the least. This is the 15% non type A part of me: I'm laid back. But I do like to plan. So needless to say the planner in me combined with the nurse had all of the potential hip diagnoses and the repercussions of each neatly laid out in my mind. You know what they say about plans, however... So after the doctor on Wednesday (December 11) was done trying to see how many times he could re-position the needle in my hip joint without making me cry, I backed him into the corner--okay not literally--and very directly told him i wanted to know what the MR-A results were. He tried to get out of it but eventually relented. Now let me just preface this with the fact that I had previously stated to a few friends that the worst thing that could possibly happen would be that the MR-A was perfectly normal and they therefore had no idea what was causing all of the hip pain and problems. Nothing worse than a non-diagnosis. The radiologist said that while yes there was a tear in my labrum, they were more concerned about my L4-L5 and L5-S1 discs that were picked up on the scan as well because they may be herniated. I now put my entire foot, skate and all, in my mouth.

The great thing about living in the 21st century is that we have a lot of medical technology that simply wasn't around 20-30 years ago. Herniated spinal discs are no longer a crippling death sentence in a literal sense. However, for a competitive figure skater, they absolutely are. Conservative treatments often fail, disc removal and spinal fusion are not a option for a skater (or for that matter, anyone who has an athletic lifestyle) and the requirements a skater places on the spine as far as shock absorption, torque, strength, stability and flexibility are incredible. The radiologist said that they would need to do a lumbar MRI to fully see the discs and that if they were what was causing the problem, the cortisone and lidocaine injection into my hip joint wouldn't help with the pain and stiffness.

I went back to the dressing room to fumble back into my pants--in case I had thought putting pants on was challenging before getting joint injections, the injections made it ten times more difficult since the joint was full of fluid--while trying to process this information. As I reached down to attempt to wiggle into my tennis shoes, I noticed that I wasn't being restricted nearly as much by the shooting pain throughout my hip and hamstring that I was so accustomed to. I halfheartedly tried to do a straight legged toe touch. Since July, I couldn't get more than halfway down without my left knee buckling and rotating inward. I was touching the tops of my shoes before I realized what was going on. My knees were unbent, my legs straight. I was still hurting and very stiff but I was actually touching my shoes. Still, it was impossible to not be absolutely scared to death that my life as I knew it was over. Skating, running, heck for that matter going from sitting to standing without feeling like my hamstring was being ripped out by muscle spasms...what was my life going to look like if I had herniated discs?

Four hours later, however, the tears of fear had practically turned into tears of joy. I had laced up my skates and was tearing up the ice like my life depended on it. I could jump without sharp pain every time I took off. I was doing split jumps for the first time in months. It didn't hurt to go into a layback. And best of all, I even was able to throw a couple death drops! Okay they were absolutely awful ones, but it was a starting point. After I went home I sat on the floor at a 90 degree angle, legs straight out in front of me and was able to stretch out and grab my feet. I had my left leg propped up on a counter top and was laying on top of it. (Both very standard hamstring stretches) I was so excited I was sending selfies of my stretches to my mom with a big smile on my face. Never would I ever have thought even 24 hours before that I would be happy  to have a labrum tear.

By Thursday morning, I would rate the pain at about 75-80% less of what it had been before the injection. Eddie, my head coach, put a call in to The Steadman Clinic, in Vail, Colorado (about 3 hours away from the Springs). Dr. Marc Philippon is a world renown surgeon who has not only piloted new arthroscopic techniques for repairing hip labrum tears, but is considered one of the foremost doctors in the world when it comes to repairing these injuries in elite athletes AND returning them to their previous level of athletic performance. His resume boasts NFL, Team USA and even Olympic athletes, including the top male pairs skater in the US. For the average person, getting an appointment with him can take months. Training at a Team USA designated Olympic training facility with some of the top coaches in the world does have benefits...less than four hours after Eddie's call, a scheduler had contacted me, emailed me online paperwork to fill out, and requested that I send a copy of my MR-A scans via Fed-Ex overnight so that the doctor could look at them on Friday. They arrived Friday morning around eleven. While the scheduler had said she would call me back on Friday, I didn't receive a call. I wasn't incredibly surprised, though, as working in the medical field I know that Fridays tend to be a very light day for most doctors in private practice. So all weekend, I've tried to prepare for what will most likely be imminent hip surgery. Purchasing and wrapping the last of my Christmas gifts, making an extra large grocery store run, doing some holiday baking for gifts and cleaning the house. All while enjoying being able to move freely and with very little pain! The way I'm choosing to look at it is that the sooner my hip is repaired, the sooner I can begin to 'prepare to come back' as Eddie calls it. And if anyone can get me back on the ice chasing my dreams, apparently it's Dr. Philippon. He has the reputation of being someone who doesn't like to do a lot of waiting around. That is, once he requests a patient's records, he is known for studying the case, evaluating the patient and performing surgery all within a few days. My hope, therefore, is that I can be up in Vail by mid-week getting put back together so that I can spend the holidays with my family and have a solid 10 days before I will have to go back to work, albeit with some modifications. Fingers crossed because type A girl is not good at dealing with uncertainty!