I'm Back

I’ve been MIA for a while now, and a lot has happened in that time. I’ll have a lot of articles coming soon on where I’ve been and where I’m going. At the moment though I’m just out of surgery for hip labram repair and osteoplasty. So here are my thoughts that I had regarding that prior to getting cut.

Pre-op Reflections

I’ve made some highly questionable decisions in my past. Recently, a lot of those have come back at me and I’ve been dealing with them face on for the first time in my life. One of the major ones I’ve been looking at lately is the string of actions and decisions that led to me requiring surgery to deal with some mechanical issues in my right hip.
I’ll start with a bit of background. In August of 2007 I had a cycling crash where I t-boned the side of a car going over 30mph. The immediate result of this was acute pre-patellar bursitis in my left knee and generally being banged up and covered in road rash. I was incredibly lucky to walk away from the crash in that condition as the general medical opinion seemed to be that I should have died.
I spent the better part of the next year putting almost all my weight on my right leg and changing my gate to accommodate the rather prolonged recovery of my left knee. At the time it was not something I thought much of, but we should always remember that we never stop adapting. A while into the following year, and some heavy training cycles that I was into at the time, I began experiencing what I though was iliopsoas tendonitis, and some severely limited range of motion in my right hip extension. I rested, let the inflammation go down, and continued business as usual. The injury came back. I did the same thing. This cycle repeated itself with range of motion getting worse, and longer times without training for the next 3 years. Somehow during all of this I maintained the firm belief that I could fix this on my own.
In late May of this year I finally mentioned the issue in an offhand manner to my primary care physician while discussing something else. This got me sent in for a bone scan with the idea that I might have a recurring stress fracture. Cut to several more tests, and MRI arthogram, and it turns out I have a massive labral tear and some excess bone growth causing a cam impingment. Info on these here.
Looking back this is something that I quite possibly could have addressed some time ago and possibly avoided a lot of current pain. What to take away from this? Mainly, that doing the same thing over and over expecting different results is not a good idea. I seemed to forget everything I knew in my obsession to fix myself without medical assistance. Also, being a stubborn idiot is not all its cracked up to be.
As of now, I will be going into surgery for hip arthroscopy. I’m looking towards progressing forward again. I will be documenting my recovery both in terms of my physical and mental state throughout. My starting points are as follows-

Physically
• Severely limited range of motion in all planes with right hip
• Severe tissue damage and inflammation around the right hip
• High pain levels associated with most movement
• Limit to almost all activity due to pain and limited ROM

Mentally
• Lack of forward progress due to physical issues and mental blocks
• Obsession issues
• Dealing with long term substance dependency
• Depression