I'm not having a hip replacement - let me just get that out of the way. It's a distinction I fear I'm going to be making fairly frequently, though perhaps less thanks to this handy dandy post!
This (in case you didn't know) is your hip (or, one's hip - you may have a hip of an entirely different stripe in your body and just not know it yet!):
A Total Hip Replacement (THR to its friends) replaces both the femoral head and the lining of the acetabular (socket) with prosthetics, whereas my own beloved/befeared PAO uses my own bits to correct the acetabular misalignment. I can do a killer fist-in-cupped-hand demonstration of this correction for those of you who are interested. :)
Basically my socket doesn't cover enough of the ball to prevent my hip from wobbling around all willy-nilly like an inebriated penguin, so Dr. Kim will make 3 cuts (probably with some scary saw, but let's not think about that!) thusly (full disclosure: I've never seen that pic before and it caused me to make a bad frowny face and go "Oh. My. God." *shudder*) and realign the piece such that it provides full coverage for the ball. It's called a joint preserving technique because it uses my own bone, cartilage, tissues and whatnot (I believe that's the medical term) to essentially recreate the joint. As such, I'll likely have as much, if not more, time left on the joint as I would with a THR, but without the restrictions a THR poses and without the need to replace the replacement as it wears out. Of course, my own joint very probably will wear out over time anyway, but it seems much more reasonable to have a hip replacement at 50 or 60 than at 29. Not to mention that by that time who knows what joint replacement technology will look like. *sings Kool Keith "mechanical legs, mechanical legs"!*
Of course, because the PAO slices right through bone and all the muscles I've been working so hard at building up, the recovery time is pretty astronomical, especially compared to the THR. As such, I'll be hospitalized for up to a week, then home and fairly low-functioning for at least a few more, all the while (ideally) on crutches, which I'll have probably up to my 12-week post-op check-up (yeah triple dash!) before getting down to a cane, recovery permitting. And, to be honest, there's a lot of shit that can go wrong, my biggest fears being nerve damage and blood clots. Oh, and it not working. ha! THAT would suck!
But so it's good I have all this time to prep, to get in better shape and deal with my Vitamin D deficiency and my slightly high cholesterol and my... uh... lack of an iPod? I'm better prepared for my surgery (5 months from tomorrow!) with each passing day!
And now so are you. :)
1 comment:
THR here - or at least I will be hopefully by late February. I'm 45 and the arthritis in my hip is just too far gone for me to have PAO. Not thrilled that I'll have to have at least one revision surgery in my lifetime - but as you say, who knows what the technology will be like by then. While my nickname now is "Bionic Bombshell" - by then it may not be just a nickname!!!
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