Physical Progress

Good news, friends! Progress is being made.

Last week I had my first appointment with the physio. Lasted about an hour and was mostly just assessment-y stuff – asking how my pain was, what made it worse, what exercises I’ve been doing etc... The best thing about it for me is that they’re really aware that my unoperated hip is giving me so much grief. So now I don’t have to do the standing exercises that hurt it so much! They’ve just given me a couple of extra exercises to do with my lying down ones instead.

But the best BEST thing about all this is that now I’m doing hydrotherapy twice a week, which means I’m back in the pool! I can’t swim yet, but I have a bunch of exercises to do in the water. It’s great because it’s low impact so it doesn’t hurt, but high resistance so it’s really good for building my muscle strength back up. It’s also pretty cool to move around without my crutches, even if it feels rather odd!  Also the others that go there are super lovely, so even though they’re all much older than me it’s a nice chance to kind of socialise.

The rather unfortunate thing about going to the physio is that they’ve actually measured my legs, and it turns out the discrepancy in leg lengths is a lot worse than I thought. They say the operated leg is now around 2.5-3cm longer than the other! Considering it was a bit shorter before the operation, that’s quite a difference. So now I have to get a lift put on my shoes. Which means wearing my shoe of choice (just a wee ballet flat) is now out of the question. Which means I have to wear ugly shoes that probably won’t go with my clothes, and I’ll look weird all the time. JOY.

The thing is, I know that my physical health is more important than my vain concerns about what I look like. But is it such a big ask to have legs that don’t hurt AND not look like a dick? Pretty sure most people get that all the time. What gets me though, is that I have to deal with this not because of some error of my own, or even because nature fucked me over and gave me this condition, but because somebody else made a mistake. That just seems really unfair. I thought they were going to fix me, but they’ve just given me something else to deal with. And yes, I’m vain because I care what I’ll look like, but I’m 22! Is that really so bad? The bone condition, the operation, the scar, the crutches... And now this. It’s just one blow to my self confidence after another.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m really grateful that I got my hip replacement. The difference in pain already is huge and that is awesome. I just didn’t know that it would come at a cost. Also I don’t know what happened or whose fault it is that my legs are now like this, so I’m not blaming anyone until I know what caused it. But somebody must have messed up or it wouldn’t have happened. They were aiming to make the legs the same lengths, and that’s obviously not what eventuated. And now I have to deal with the consequences.

Things that are good: Exercises increasing my range of movement, being in the pool, the movie ‘Win Win’, catching up with old friends you haven’t seen in yonks, going to see the sister and the brother-in-law and the new niece in Sydney at the start of December.

Things that are bad: Still not being able to drive, having to pick two pairs of shoes to get altered that will be all I can wear, my computer being a dick and not being able to figure out what’s wrong with it.