After the Cortisone Injection

I had my post-cortisone injection follow-up with the orthopedist on 6/18, and it ended up being an entire afternoon of... waiting. UGH! This is what I hate, hate, HATE about orthopedists!

Anyway. As I told the doctor, the cortisone injection definitely helped, but. But. But. It wasn't what I had hoped for. On a pain scale of 1-10, prior to the injection, I'd been feeling 7-8 on a daily basis. After the injection, I was in a pretty steady holding pattern of 4-5ish, which was a major improvement. I could actually function at least somewhat normally and walk without a limp some of the time. I could also squat down, sit crisscross applesauce (formerly known as Indian style, lol), and get out of the bed in the morning without doing ten minutes of stretching; these were all things I hadn't been able to do in at least six or seven months. That was amazing. At the same time, there was still a low to medium-level nagging pain that I wasn't sure I could live with for the rest of my life. If I were 60 or 70, it would probably be okay. But... I'm not even 40! 

After I had the injection, the medical assistant told me that I would probably feel very sore the next day, and that was normal, and that I would start to feel the effects of the shot after about three days. Interestingly, I was VERY SORE right after the shot, but woke up the next morning feeling AMAZING. I seriously got right out of bed and felt elated at how amazing I felt. I had not felt that amazing in several years. I mean, I was sore where the needle had been stuck, and the muscle around that area was also sore, but that was very minor considering the pain that I had been feeling in the joint itself. Based on what the medical assistant had told me, I was thinking it was the most ridiculous placebo effect ever. I figured I wanted this to work so bad I willed the pain away overnight. Unfortunately, the elation only lasted for a day, and the next day and the day after that (when I was supposedly supposed to start feeling the effects), I started to feel, eh, so-so again. Like I said, I definitely felt better than before, but... it was nothing to get that excited about.

I was surprised when the doctor asked me how I felt right after the injection. I told him it hurt like hell and I could barely walk and that I had no idea a shot could hurt so F-ing much. LOL. That's not what he meant, apparently, because then he asked me how I felt the day after the injection. I told him I felt AMAZING and thought I was cured. Then he said that was, in a way, a good thing, or at least good information. Then he explained that the day after the shot would be the height of the shot's effects. What I was feeling was the peak of the steroid's effects plus the residual effects of the numbing agent in the shot. The fact that that brought on so much relief at least confirms that the pain itself is coming from inside the hip joint. Thinking back, I recall that the orthopedist I saw in my 20s said that one way to confirm his suspicion of a labral tear was to have an anesthetic injected into my hip joint when I was feeling pain; if the anesthetic relieved the pain, it was likely a labral tear.

The fact that I responded well, but only extremely temporarily, to the injection, made him think I might benefit from surgery. Ugh. I mean, he wasn't pushy or anything; he reiterated that I just had to consider how much I could take and for how long. However, I should consider that what I felt right after the shot was the way things could be all the time. That was definitely food for thought. I've gone through good days and bad days with my hip, but I could not remember a time when I felt as awesome and pain-free as the day after the injection. To have that feeling all the time would be amazing. It is sort of like when I had foot pain in my 20s. The pain came and went and when the doctor told me I needed to wear a boot for six weeks, I wasn't thrilled. At the same time, once I got the boot, it felt amazing to be able to walk around pain-free. My foot had been hurting for so long I'd forgotten what normal was like.

The thing is that I had a totally scary picture in my mind of what surgery might be like and I'd never had an actual conversation with an orthopedist about it. The only surgeries I've had in my lifetime are a tonsillectomy and a D&C. (This is actually semi-miraculous for someone who did gymnastics for 13 years; the majority of my teammates had at least one surgery during their gymnastics careers.) I asked the doctor what the recovery time from surgery would be, thinking maybe it wasn't as huge a deal as I was imagining. A lot of web sites tell you the recovery time is six months, which is a long time. But the idea of 'recovery time' is vague. For example, it's unlikely I'd be willing to spend six months on crutches, but I could probably give up running marathons for six months (ha ha!).

Since this doctor doesn't do hip arthroscopy, he couldn't answer my questions. He said if he did, 'I'd just be making things up.' However, he did have an assistant come in and set up a consult appointment with the doctor who would do the surgery if I decided to go that route. He said that I might as well set up an appointment and get the facts so that I could make an informed decision as well as consider a 'good time' to do the surgery if I choose that. (Of course, he mentioned that there is no 'good time' just like there is no 'good time' to have kids, yet people have kids anyway. So there you go.)

So, I set up a surgical consult appointment the next week with another doctor - the one I had already met, who looks like he's, like, 20. At that point, I really didn't think I was going to go this route, at least not anytime soon, but I did want a 'get the facts' appointment, rather than relying on Dr. Google. Also, that pain-free day I spent post-injection was in the back of my mind. Wouldn't it be amazing to feel like that all the time?