This month is the 3rd anniversary of my hip replacement surgery. It seems a good time for a little update on how things are.
As far as the operation went and as far as the doctors were concerned, the surgery was seen as a success. There were no complications and everything healed as it should.
The scar is still clearly visible but it doesn't bother me. The scar reminds me of what I've been through and I feel proud of myself for that. I feel proud of that 10 year old girl who went through so much without complaining. I feel amazed at how she coped with the pain she endured at the time. I feel proud of how she went onto university and worked hard to do so well in getting a first class honours degree, and how she went on to raise a family whilst coping with that deformed and damaged hip joint and all the pain it caused her.
But if I think back to what drove me to having the surgery in the first place, it was the worsening of my back pain. Back pain that I believe had been caused by the arthritis that I had in my left hip since the age of 10.
I remember the surgeon telling me that with my new hip I will be able to do so much more than I could before. With the new range of movement that a new hip joint would give me, he said I'd even be able to go skiing. So I was hopeful. I had no desire to go skiing but what I REALLY wanted to do was be able to do normal things like putting my socks on the normal way and not in the way I've have to adjust to doing. I was hopeful that I may be able to do some form of exercise again - perhaps something gentle like yoga or pilates; I was hopeful that the new range of movement would mean that I would finally be able to get into some basic yoga positions. I was hopeful that I'd be able to do the household chores without pain. I was hopeful that the daily chronic pain I had lived with for all these years might finally go if the source of the problem (i.e. my hip) was solved.
Three years on, and I still live with daily back pain. It is a combination of back ache and back pain and to see what I mean by that, I previously wrote a post about it here.
I haven't even thought about going skiing because I still cannot put my socks on normally, I still cannot do any real form of exercise without it causing pain. I have to pace myself and be very careful with household chores and there are some things that I know I cannot do because of the pain it causes me.
The range of movement in my left hip IS better than it was before surgery but that is because it really couldn't have got much worse. But it is nowhere near what I hoped it would be and there is nothing that the doctors can do about that. The actual new hip joint itself is capable of that range of movement but it seems that everything else in my body that spent 30 years in pain is unable to adjust and strengthen enough to be able to move my hip as it should. I have tried various therapies and treatments to help and even those that do help (mctimony chiropractor, acupuncture, sports therapy massage and myo-facial release therapy) only seem to help for a short while. It seems when I go to bed at night, everything "re-sets" so that I wake up with a stiff and painful back again.
From keeping diaries I've recognised that the weather does play a part in my pain - a cold snap often meaning that I will struggle from the moment I wake up. On those days I need to remind myself that there will be better days again as those are the days that I feel so helpless in many ways. I stumbled across this post I'd written back in 2015 and I still vividly remember the mum-guilt I felt at not being able to take my own child to school.
I imagine that I am the exception and that for most people, a hip replacement operation would have a better outcome. I wrote some tips on what I'd wish I'd known before surgery in this post last year as I found very little out there before my own surgery.
So January is a pretty rubbish time of year for me and even as I type this, I don't want it to sound like a needy sympathy post. Despite everything my body has been through, I stubbornly refuse to let arthritis dictate my whole life although I have to recognise that it has influenced so much of my life. I am also glad that the situation for children with JIA (Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis) now is very different to when I was first diagnosed. The treatments available these days are effective in reducing pain and inflammation for many children. This means that hopefully their joints will not become permanently damaged as mine was all those years ago.
I feel there is a balance to be struck between speaking out about my experiences and without it sounding like a moan or pity-party. But if I don't speak out then I'm just adding to the lack of understanding that there is around invisible illness. And there is a huge amount of that. One example is when Miss T first had JIA and was constantly in pain and needing a wheelchair, someone felt it acceptable to have a go at us for parking at the end of the car park where the "elderly need to park because they can't walk so far" - She had simply looked at me and my daughter before we even got out of the car and made a judgement that we were both fit and healthy based on just looking at our faces. She hadn't even bothered to notice the wheelchair in the boot of the car before she spoke out at us like that.
If you have a story to tell about living with chronic pain, join in the conversation on social media with the #MyChronicPain hashtag organised by @JoelVsArthritis
Joel's blog is a mine of thought-provoking blogposts and information that will resonate with anyone struggling with chronic illness and chronic pain and prove hugely educational and informative to anyone who is not. I find myself nodding along to so much of what he writes - especially the early days of his own diagnosis with JIA as I can relate to so much of what he's written.
