Its always something...5 months from today?

So, its been a while since I have posted mainly because there has not really been anything new happening, but this past week a lot changed.  I have been having increased pain over the last two to three weeks, which has been frustrating.  I called the pain management clinic that I go to, to ask them about hip injections, as this had been mentioned to me at my first appointment in October.  They thought that an injection would be a good idea, as did the surgeon.  So I had an injection (which is just a mixture of a steroid and anesthetic) on Monday.  I have had injections before, once before my first surgery in 2010 and once again in January for my MRI (where they inject the dye into your hip to see cartilage better).  The first one that I had was horrible, very painful during the injection, very painful afterwards, and it did not really help much.  Both of my past injections were done by moving x-ray but this one was done by CT scan, which was interesting.  It was not too painful, although I was still very nervous about it.  The CT scan images were really disturbing though. The joint space was VERY narrow and part of the femur head was actually touching the socket, as well as loose cartilage floating around in the joint space.  It was pretty upsetting to see this because while I have been having increased pain, it’s always in the back of my mind that maybe it’s not real, it’s all in my head.  It’s hard to not think this way when often many health care professionals have no idea about things that are wrong with the hip, especially in someone as young as myself.

So after the injection I was a little stiff, but not to bad and my husband (Adam) and I stopped at Walgreens to get some ice packs for the drive home (which is about a 2 hour drive).  All was well until we hit a snow storm on our way home and it was white out conditions.  Once we got through that and home, I was in excruciating pain.  I could barely walk.  For a few hours I tried to get the pain to go away, but nothing was working, so we ended up at the ER.  Once we finally got home again and I was comfortable I was able to sleep.  For the past week since the injection my hips have been giving me a lot of pain.  It’s frustrating and annoying.

So due to the above unfortunate situation I decided to drop the 2 classes that I had at college.  I am really disappointed in myself, but I feel like I don’t have any other options.  Trying to work and do school plus live with this pain has become impossible for me and I just end up driving myself insane over it.  I just need to realize that this hip stuff is going to consume my life for a little while.  

On the up side, surgery is 5 months from today!  I am nervous but excited!  I hope that this is the last one!  Once I get the images from the CT scan I will post them.  Thanks for reading!

Here are those images from the CT scan: