Scar Tissue

I’m long overdue for some good news. The last post was a bit of a bummer, primarily saying that I was giving up in order to end the pain. My doctor was out on vacation, things weren’t going so well, and I suspected that I’d had yet another major setback. There had been talk of scar tissue complications, but given the amount of pain I was experiencing after each popping instance, my PA thought it sounded a little worse.

Finally last Thursday I was able to visit with my doctor. He gave me some good news, but rather than blab about it, I wanted to let it situate a few days and make it sure it would prove correct.

He said that it was almost definitely scar tissue. His way of wording was convincing. He said that of the top 5 things that it could possibly be, 1-4 would be scar tissue. The chances of the injury not being fixed and requiring surgery later are almost zero. I still have a labrum. It’s just that my pelvic muscles are inflamed because the scar tissue rubs them the wrong way. Every time the hip moves in a new direction, there’s an actual cut with bleeding deep down, and pain is completely normal. As I’ve found with everything involving hips, the pain can be worse than other parts of the body and takes longer to heal, so what I was enduring was completelyreasonable.

So what now?

Scar tissue does not heal. It is going to be there, although it will likely become a lesser issue over time. Some people find that they can never get completely away from it, and have to find ways to tolerate the pain. Others find that with patience and not overdoing things, it’ll gradually get better and they can be themselves again. For some people it takes longer than others.

He started me out on a low dose of prednisone. I groaned. I’ve taken it before and loathe the medication. It makes me feel bloated, keeps me up at night, and just gives me an overall blah feeling. I reluctantly took it, wanting to try anything at this point.

The problem is I had to stop taking my anti-inflammatory altogether. That had been the only thing taking the edge off the constant pain, so for the first two days on the medicine, I had a tough time. Not only did I have the prednisone side effects, but the hip felt like it was about to burst. That was Friday and most of Saturday.

Late on Saturday, as some pain medication had worn off, I felt surprisingly good. I went to sleep, and woke up the next morning still feeling good, and found that throughout the day, I didn’t require a single pain reliever. On Monday morning I still felt good. What do you know? The doctor might have been right. The prednisone has definitely helped.

Of course I cannot and don’t want to take prednisone forever. It is possible this dose will get me over the hump temporarily and I can continue improving. There’s also a possibility of getting a shot into my iliopsoas that will reduce the inflammation for a time.

The other good news is that I’ve recovered enough that my doctor thinks I am finished with physical therapy. As long as I can get around the scar tissue pain, I should be able to bike and swim as long as I don’t go too hard.

This coming weekend, my wife and I will be leaving for New York City for a week-long celebration tour of her Jeopardy win. By then I should be back on all of my anti-inflammatories, and I should be able to walk around mostly like any other human being. The thing is, as a tourist in New York, I’ll be walking a lot. It could get painful, but it’ll also be a test, and might actually be good for me to finally strengthen the hip without excessive impact. We’ll be leisurely and careful, and will make sure to have enough downtime to recover.

So this is definitely good news. At least better than last time.