Ugh.

Well, my 4am jaunt down to Boston yesterday was very successful, though I discovered that traffic on 93 is just as bad at 7:15 in the morning as it is at 4:15 in the afternoon, when I left the city. The good news is that I had a little navigational mishap on the way out and still managed to get back on track by my wits alone (Garmin be damned!). The bad news is... yeah, I need another PAO. Dangitall! Somehow lo these many months I've been laboring under the false impression (slash hope) that since the right hip has been largely asymptomatic, I might get away with just the one PAO. But it is not to be so!

After my pre-op check-in business and blood donation (which went very well, if somewhat bruisingly), I had some more x-rays before seeing Erin, Dr. Kim's trusty PA. After initial pleasantries, she asked "So! Which hip do you want us to operate on?" and I felt like I'd been doused with icewater. "Uh... the left? The left's the one that bothers me." A moment passes and I say "So... the right? Is it your opinion that a PAO on the right is inevitable?" *holds breath* I even tried to get Dr. Kim to disagree with her when he came in, but no such luck. Honestly I was too exhausted yesterday to even begin to process the information, but getting up this morning was a bit of a stunner. Not that I don't have much more pressing matters to attend to at the moment!

The x-rays allowed Erin to calculate the coverage angles of each hip (how much of the femoral head [ball] is covered by the acetabulum [socket]). Ideally, these angles should be in the 20-degree range - my right is about 15 and my left a whopping NINE. Which explains why the left's been such an issue, and also why the right is a bit twingey, though still far behind the left in terms of discomfort. I asked Erin what degree of dysplasia I had and she said "I'd say... pretty bad." On a scale, of course, of Zero to Bad!

Meanwhile, the list of things I need to do before surgery isn't getting any shorter - at this point, I'm really looking forward to being sedated!