The hip injury
Almost two years ago, Tracy’s daughter wanted to start running. Though Tracy doesn’t enjoy running, she outfitted the two of them and would run laps with her in the mornings. One day Tracy landed wrong on her foot, and felt something pop painfully in her hip area. After weeks passed, what she thought was a pulled muscle did not heal.
Kat and I drove her to Utah on a mattress (she couldn’t — and still can’t — sit properly for long periods) to visit some specialists in March of 2012. You might remember me posting about our trip in the invalid mobile. She was able to see a terrific osteopathic surgeon, and get some answers.
First diagnosis: labral tear
What she had was a labral tear. The ‘cuff’ of tissue that seals around your hip socket was torn toward the inside where your inner thigh meets your groin. We were told that it was very difficult to find a doctor that had the special training to repair it – many doctors will remove the ‘cuff’ altogether, damaging the hip further as the cuff is vital for holding the lubricating fluid in the joint that allows the hip to move freely.
Complicating matters, Tracy has what we’d been calling “ligament laxity.” Years ago, when a doctor tried to repair her shoulder that kept dislocating, he found that her tendon — which should have behaved like a tight elastic snapping snuggly back into place — was stretched out like a long piece of bubble gum. He refused to try to repair her other shoulder after that, and told her she was a bad candidate for surgery. This ‘laxity’ is what made her such a flexible, bendy gymnast, but is now causing devastating problems as she approaches her 40s.
Injections & EDS
Since she was not a great candidate for surgery due to the ‘laxity,’ she located an alternative treatment where she received painful injections full of B12 and something called Prolozone once a month. Kat, Jennifer, and I would drive her down to Pocatello to get the injections once a month and it was always an adventure as Tracy’s nervous system would kind of short out and a simple pin prick would feel like her leg and torso were being shredded and stabbed. This was due to her second diagnosis, a somewhat rare and lesser known condition called Ehler’s Danlos Syndrome. Tracy has Type 3, Hypermobility.
Ehlers Danlos Syndrome is an inherited connective tissue disorder. It causes a mutation in the collagen that helps connective tissue resist deformation. While Tracy’s EDS seems to mostly affect her tendons and ligaments, it can also cause weakness and deterioration of the skin, joins, muscles, blood vessels, and visceral organs. She has been passing out and seizing since January and it’s because the EDS affects her blood vessels, lungs, and heart muscle. Sometimes her body just has to shut down to reorganize and redistribute resources.
The EDS diagnosis was the final nail in the coffin for surgery. Because of the EDS, she was a very bad candidate to repair the labral tear in her inner hip area. If the doctors operated to close the hole, the tissue would just stretch out again. Even a total hip replacement wouldn’t help, as her body is simply struggling every single day to hold her bones together, and wouldn’t hold a man-made bone any better.
Treatment
Once an active cyclist and gymnast, her condition has deteriorated very quickly. Though EDS is not curable, muscle strength makes it livable. This is somewhat hilarious, because exercising is next to impossible for Tracy to do these days without injuring herself. She broke her foot just trying to clean her bathroom. However, her doctor and therapist have okay’d a special bike called the Elliptigo to help her build her muscles back safely.
Tracy sees her marvelous physical therapist at least once a week, if not more. He works with her for hours, putting all her bones back in place. Her bones — especially her hip and pubic bones — slide out of place, rotating forward or backward. Sometimes she will have one leg a few inches longer than the other because her hip bones are out of whack.
Both the bike and physical therapy are expensive, and Tracy can no longer do as much to supplement the family income.
Fundraiser
Our goal is to raise $5000 which will pay for one year of physical therapy appointments and enable her to get that special bike. We’re already up to $2800! I’m so excited. She’ll be able to put that bike on some kind of stand inside her house so she can move and get safe exercise during the winter months.
I know it’s Christmas time, and your extra dollars have probably already been spent, but if you can spare even a little, send your pennies to Moola for Muscles over at YouCaring.com.
You can read more about Tracy’s adventures with her hip and uncooperative body in ‘the hip’ category here on her blog.
Thanks so much for reading, and have a great weekend!
Tracy
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Bits and pieces
Hippie party