Hello, my story: Torn hip labrum, hip impingement, arthritis

Hello everyone, in order to introduce myself, I will tell my story.

Around two years ago, I had an incident at work with my supervisor. For some reason, he had developed an ax to grind against me and some other employees (we were all three of us women of color, and one of whom we learned he had been having an affair with--not me). So out of the blue, he emailed me a two pages long letter, on official letterhead, threatening me with a Performance Improvement Plan and putting something on my permanent work record. I read the letter with absolute shock and disbelief, because everything he said in the letter was a lie.

I began to seriously stress out. I was a single mom, and the year before that, my own mother had died a long and protracted death in a nursing home. I had taken time off to be with her, for around three months, maybe four, then rushed immediately back to work after she died because I had been away for so long. I had worked for the same employer for ten years. There had been times in the past when I had gone through extreme stresses at work, and I knew the elaborate processes that would need to be gone into in order to avert further trouble from my boss, who had apparently become deranged. I was a teacher, and so allegations of wrongdoing are very serious. My boyfriend had recently left me, moving out suddenly one day.In addition, my teenage daughter had a drug problem and had unbeknownst to me dropped out of college. I sensed something was up with her, but I was under so much pressure at work that I couldn't adequately deal with it.

That night, after receiving the harassing letter from my supervisor, I was walking across my kitchen floor, heading for the staircase, and my left leg simply went out from under me when I went to take a step. I had lost all of the strength in the left side of my leg. It happened between one step and the next, literally. I dragged myself up the staircase using my arms and my right leg, and sat down at my desk to write a long letter in response to my boss's letter, in which I defended myself.

That was how it started. I had been running three miles a day, every day. before that, and was in excellent shape. I was 49 at the time. After that evening, I walked with a limp, and colleagues at work commented on it.

I saw a sports therapist I had seen before for chiropractic over the years, and he gave me adjustments once a week or so. I made it to the end of that school year, and started the next. A little over two months in, in October, a different supervisor attacked me, this time verbally, and I was led through the hallways to a meeting she insisted I have on a topic I was not informed of, a surreal and Kafkaesque waking nightmare. At that moment, I decided that if I survived the rest of that day, I was going to leave and never come back. I wanted more than anything to be able to run again.

I left my job and went on family medical leave act for anxiety and depression.

I saw a physical therapist in a fancy location for two visits, then I asked my sports medicine doctor if he could do my physical therapy, and he said yes. I went through a course of physical therapy with him, and he also had me see a traditional doctor affiliated with a hospital, who gave me an X-ray. The X-ray said "No discernible impingement", but I was diagnosed with hip impingement, and minor arthritis.

The sports medicine doc got me running again through a gradual process.

I decided to move, and start a new life. I did not continue running, because I couldn't find a track close enough to walk to, and I sold my car because I had moved to NYC. My daughter turned 21 and went missing for the next two years. My hip pain returned, I began to limp again, and I was sent to a new physical therapist. At first my leg improved, then it worsened. The pain spread down my leg and into my big toe. I went to the PT for months, then I learned that Dr. Sarno has a doctor who used to work with him who still practices out of NYU medical center, Ira Raushbaum, and I got an appointment with him. I was so excited.

Ira Raushbaum gave me a cursory examination, murmering to me, "You might want to try seeing a chiropractor--that area is related to T4 or T5." Then at the end he told me that he did, indeed, believe I was a candidate for the program. However, he said, it didn't take insurance.

He looks at me and says, "Doctor Sarno didn't take insurance for the pain clinic." I was blown away. All those stories in all those Dr. Sarno books--it never really mentions payment or insurance. It just says he told people to do it or offered them that they could do it. The exchange of money is never mentioned, to my memory, in any of the books. So it was a rude awakening.

It was in two parts, each part of which was a couple or three grand. He offered me a deal of 1,900 a class. When I told him I didn't have that kind of money, he had the balls to tell me, "Well, you can tell people you saw Ira Raushbaum, of the famed pain clinic begun by Doctor Sarno."

I asked him, "Why can't I move this leg outwards?" he said, "Well, Sarno believed that mild oxygen deprivation can cause symptoms of that kind."

A couple of months of the leg getting progressively worse, and I called Raushbaum's office to ask for a referral to a chiropractor. I left the message with his secretary. He called me up, and argued with me, telling me that he has never, in his career, given a referral to a chiropractor. "But when you examined me, you said it could be related to T4 or T5," I told him. "You said I might want to see a chiropractor, but I can't see a chiropractor with my insurance without a referral. I already tried."

We go back and forth. I was so horrified that I didn't even tell him that I used to be a journalist, and I have on-point recall. He finally says he'll refer me to a physiatrist, whatever that is, and true to his word, a secretary calls me up and gives me a couple of names.

I choose one, and he orders me a CT scan and a cortisone shot. The CT scan shows I have a torn hip labrum and arthritis. He also orders another round of PT, but he tells me I need a total hip replacement.

The new PT is doing a good job, but the cortisone makes me pain-free. I feel so self-confident that I, with the blessing of the physical therapist, sign up for a women's weightlifting course because I want to restore muscle tone in my now smaller left leg. But the coach makes the class do circuit exercises, every one of which hurts my leg, and I'm back to limping again.

My leg deteriorates more, I'm now living with chronic pain. I've had only temp jobs since my family medical leave was cut off, now I'm low income and when I finally was working at a job that was going from temp to perm, I got COVID-19, and was asked to resign. I'm embarrassed about limping and shocked by how quickly my life took a nosedive. Two years ago I was still vibrant, and now I feel like an old woman. Most of my hair turned prematurely white from the stress load I've been under. Around the same time the leg problem came on, I got blepharitis and a chalazion that I haven't been able to get rid of. Of course, my partner broke up with me. Really feeling at an all-time low. The only good thing is that my daughter returned to my life, and she's trying to get her life together.

What seemed odd to me is that when the physiatrist was explaining the pain in my hip using the CAT scan image, I read the plate and it said, "Right side." I pointed this out to him, and he was like, "Oh, so it is," and he switched to the plate of the left side. So, in words, there's no difference between the left and right sides. But only the left side is impinged. My torso is torquing towards the left side now, and the pain radiates down the front of my left leg.

 

Hi there! I was just diagnosed with FAI hip impingement and I also am a big runner. I am in total despair. How are you?