Some perspective: My husband is flying out tonight to go to the funeral of a dear friend, who unexpectedly dropped dead on Friday, at the age of 37. He leaves behind four children and a pregnant wife. Although I could not sleep last night because my hips were throbbing, and I'm feeling increasing frustration toward my surgeon and about my situation in general, I do realize that it could be much, much worse. In the large scheme of things that life can throw at you, this is extremely minor. I'm grateful that this frustration is the biggest annoyance in my life right now.
That said, I am simultaneously dreading and looking forward to my cortisone injection tomorrow. Dreading - because now that I already have one cortisone shot under my belt, I know that they Hurt. Like. Hell. Looking forward to - because now that I already have one cortisone shot under my belt, I know that they can offer significant pain relief. And I reeeeaaaaaallly need that pain relief right now. I feel as if my pain levels have slowly but steadily been increasing over the past week, which, quite frankly, sucks. I have actually been using a crutch to get around the house this morning because it helps my hip not hurt so much and I feel like there is no point in pushing through the pain. I've been pushing through it for the past few weeks, which has been making it worse, not better.
At this point, I've pinned all of my hopes on the cortisone injection. But I have been losing some sleep over the anticipation of it. I remember when my daughter was born, even after all my birthing classes, I had such horrible back labor that I said yes to the epidural faster than you can say 'natural birthing classes.' Unfortunately, the one anesthesiologist in town was tied up at the time, so I went for several hours without it. Eventually my OB/GYN arrived at the hospital and gave me an intrathecal injection. A few minutes after the injection, my blood pressure dropped and my daughter's heart rate fell to 40 BPM. Even though I wasn't fully dilated, my OB/GYN had to vacuum her out because her life was in danger. Fast forward six years to my son's birth. Because of my previous experience with the intrathecal, I was dead set against any injections. Dead set. At the same time, I recalled the excruciating pain that led me to beg for an injection, even though I had been fairly set against it. The anticipation of the pain I was going to experience, along with the knowledge that I would absolutely not have an epidural, led to many sleepless nights before the delivery. Fortunately, my son was born six weeks early, so that saved me from six weeks of sleeplessness, lol. Just as I got through my son's birth, I will get through the injection. I just hope that being prepared for the pain might make it easier the second time around.
I am also curious to see how much it helps this time. I remember the first time, I felt absolutely amazing the morning after the injection. Apparently this was due to the numbing agent in the injection, and not the cortisone. Unfortunately, the effect of the numbing agent was short-lived, but the doctor said the fact that it provided so much relief was good information, because it confirmed that the pain was coming from inside the hip joint, and not from somewhere else. This also helped confirm that I would likely benefit from surgery to fix my labrum. So now I have mixed feelings about the injection. On the one hand, if I feel awesome the day after the injection, it will be nice to feel pain free. On the other hand, I don't like the idea that even after surgery I could be having that much pain coming from inside my joint. I know that my muscles all around my hip are also 'angry' (to use my surgeon's words), but it's hard for me to tell how much of pain is coming from the muscles and how much of the pain is coming from the hip joint. In a way, I'd feel better if I knew the pain were coming from my muscles rather than my hip joint, but this would also mean that the cortisone injection won't really help, which would suck. I'm trying to decide if this is a lose-lose or a win-win situation, ha ha. In the interest of staying positive, I will try to see this as win-win, but ask me again tomorrow. :)
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