Since I've been considering the possibility that I need a new orthopedist (and not necessarily the one the my current orthopedist recommends), I've been asking around about orthopedists. One of my friends, who had hip arthroscopy a few months after I did, said that she liked her doctor 'just fine.' It wasn't exactly a rousing endorsement, except then she added that she had only seen him a few times, followed by, 'You know, my hip really doesn't hurt at all anymore.' Then it struck me that I should not be shopping around for an orthopedist that I like; I should be shopping around for one with whom I will not need to have a long-term relationship. LOL.
I thought of this because I just got back from my third ultrasound for my DVT, and I realized I was becoming a regular at the imaging place. Although it is very lovely and the staff are very nice and I've had nothing but really good experiences with the techs, I don't think it's a good place to be a regular. Ha. My appointment was at 2:45, and they asked me to be there at 2:30, so of course I was there by 2:25. I hadn't even finished filling out the forms they gave me when I was called back to do my registration. Then the woman registering me informed me that I didn't need to do any of the paperwork because I had done it recently, and if they ever tried to give it to me again (i.e., when I go back on Tuesday), I should just tell them I've already done it. So 'registration' took all of two minutes, and I was back in the ultrasound room by 2:35 and back in my car before 3:00. In and out.
A fast ultrasound is a good ultrasound. This much I know. If it takes a long time, it means they are stopping a lot and taking pictures of your blood clots and drawing a line across them to show the diameter. It was a different tech this time, and unlike the one I've had before, she did not have the screen turned on that allows you to see what she was doing, but I could tell by how quickly she was going that she was probably not finding anything exciting (exciting being bad in this case). In the end, she told me that things looked much better than before. Hurray. I asked if she saw any blood clots at all and she sort of hesitated, then said, 'Well, I think once you have them...' She sort of trailed off, so I finished for her, '... then you have them forever?' (I had read this was a possibility.) She said, 'I think sometimes they never clear off the edges...' but then seemed uncomfortable stepping out of her circle of approved dialogue, so I didn't push any more. I guess I will just have to wait and see what the much smarter doctors have to say about it. (That's sarcasm, by the way.) But I feel confident. My leg really doesn't bother me at all anymore, and I've never felt misguided by an ultrasound tech before (and I've had a lot of ultrasounds).
The only bad thing about the ultrasound was that she asked me to rotate my leg, and when I did this, my hip immediately began to throb. I tried to roll my whole body a little, and basically just ended up getting goop all over my other leg. So the ultrasound itself was quite painful, and I'm slightly alarmed about how much that little bit of external rotation hurt me. But I will wait until Tuesday to worry about that. In the mean time, I am going to throw back some meloxicam and go skiing this weekend.
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