For the backstory, I attempted to snow board a local hill with my kiddos in January of 2015. The board slid away from me and I crashed, HARD, onto my left hip at a funny angle with my left foot turned out. POP! I heard. It hurt, but I got up and turned around the other way on the board and kept trying to go down the hill! Idiot! I know! After switching to sledding, we went home and I noted the pain. The next three months, I felt like my left hip would "slide" around and it was really painful. It didn't feel stable. A friend of mine suggested that I might have torn my labrum. Noted, yep, but it started to feel better, so I never went in to have it looked at. Zoom to fall of 2015, I had pain in my right hip, soft tissue stuff- a strain and tear. Therapy, testing, etc. Kept going....kept training hard.....kept working as a trainer full time. March 2016 (so, more than a year later), I decide to end therapy for the right hip and have the left hip looked at because the instability and slipping was noticeable again. My orthopedic surgeon walked in, looked at me, and said, "You have a nasty tear in your left labrum." Okay. I jumped through the hoops of getting an injection in there to mask the pain and promised to do therapy on myself, knowing it was not the solution. Zoom to August 2016, I called my surgeon's team and said, "It's time to do surgery." This was not a light decision....what would I do about running my training business? Would my clients understand? (YES!). I knew that I'd be on crutches for 4 weeks and in therapy for a few months. BUT. I couldn't perform much lower body exercise effectively without pain....my left knee hurt....my right hip was tired of compensating. You just don't understand how much your hip stability matters to your body movement until you have catastrophic injury in there and instability. I felt like my hip would pop out at any given time several times per day. For my future joint health and to keep working in my profession, I jumped in and scheduled the surgery for Oct. 28, 2016....almost 2 years after tearing my labrum. Well, the surgical team reported to my husband and I post- surgery that my labrum was torn from 10-2 (imagine a clock face). That's 1/3 of my labrum! They anchored it down for me and I have stability again!
It's been a smooth recovery, since I was familiar with the therapy and diligently did it. In fact, I had the physical therapist wagging her pen at me more than one visit for "overdoing it." Whatever. I wanted to make it back and make it back NOW! I went into surgery strong and that was important. As soon as I could ride the bike, I did. As soon as I could walk with one crutch vs. two, I did....then, no crutches. I worked on distance and stamina in the joint. No limping. Stability, then strength in the hip. Jumping has re-emerged. Flexibility has taken longer, but coming.
I'm finally to a point where I can have decent dumbbells in my hands for several lower body exercises. I don't feel like I have "remedial, beginner" workouts. I have to give this repair some longevity and push my ego out of the way. I've had to tell my inner self to shut up more than once because I'm not where I want to be. I'm making my way back. Not being able to work as intensely or the volume I want over the past 7 months has resulted in some of my clothes fitting in a way that I don't like. It makes me frustrated, not patient.
My awesome surgical team? Knowing what I do for a living, they looked me in the eye pre-surgery and post-surgery both and said, "The most important thing you need to do is be patient." Okay, Okay.
Sometimes a setback is a set up for a comeback. I'll get there.
