| 3 Months Out of Bone Graft Surgery |
Hello everyone. I was diagnosed with AVN in both hips in fall of '08, I am 31. It is most likely caused by taking Prednisone for lengthy periods of time to treat moderately severe Crohn's Disease. It took me about 3 years to get my Chrohn's under control, now this. Great....
Upon diagnosis I had no collapse in either hips, but the left hurt while the right did not. The first Orthopedic doctor I saw told me to simply "take it easy, try to stay off of it for awhile". This didn't sit well with me, so I sought a second opinion. The second Orthopedic doctor told me to go on crutches for 6 weeks, since he noticed some edema in my left femur. I pushed to have decompression surgery done, but he advised against it. So I did, it felt better, and went back to normal activities afterwards after 6 weeks. 6 months later I was back in the doctor's office (a third doctor) with slight collapse of my left femoral head. He asked me "Why didn't you have core decompression done when you were diagnosed?" Sigh.......
Two weeks later I was in the operating room having a core decompression done on my right hip and a bone graft on the left. Everything seemed to go well, my first few weeks out were pretty painful and boring. I was told to use crutches for 6 weeks, then a cane for 6 weeks. However, I was also told to start PT after 6 weeks. I actually waited 8 weeks befor starting therapy, just not feeling ready for it. Now, I am 7 weeks deep in PT and still struggling. My left hip is still in alot of pain. My 6 week checkup showed no collapse in either hip. I am reading more and more about this surgery and it seems many people are put on crutches for 6 months afterwards! I am still in quite a bit of pain. Not so much walking, but moving my leg upwards at about 70 degerees feels like there is a grinder in there. Sometimes it is worse than others, it especially hurts after extended use and therapy. Am I pusing too much too soon? All I hear is "It differs from person to person" and "do what your body can handle". I would really like to know what timelines have been given to other patients that have had this surgery. I am an extremely active person, sports are a BIG part of my life and I want to be able to do them again, well. Anyone that has had this surgery and could offer ANY advice PLEASE do so. Thanks for reading.
Reply to "3 Months Out"
To DonReeve:
Sorry to hear about your AVN misfortune, but it sounds as though you are doing what you can to fight it. Although you are younger than me, as I'm 51, I am a very active 51. My AVN was almost certainly tied to steroids, but only a DosePak's worth. Turns out that I was allergic and had a very bad reaction to the meds. Couldn't walk for 4 days due to the way the drugs attacked my joints and muscles. Doc's at the time said I'd be OK, but 18 months or so later, the right hip started really giving me problems. Just the opposite of you, my left hip is affected, but not as bad as my right. 10 weeks ago today, I had a core decompression in which the Doc really roto-rooted out the necrotic bone and put in a synthetic new bone graft that he has had good success with. After 8 weeks he told me that I could start walking "as tolerated". It hasn't been that great of an experience, as I still have fairly serious pain. He told me that I should start seeing noticable improvement around 12-13 weeks, so I've been biding my time. Won't see him again for another week, but he has told me that PT will be next on the agenda. In my case there was also no collapse of the femoral head, but he did say the AVN was "pretty involved" and that the lesion was medium to large sized. He has layed some mental groundwork for me to look at 6 mos as a timetable to truly determine whether the surgery is a success, so clearly in his experience it takes time. With the bone graft, he said it would take 8 mos for the femoral head to generate dense bone to completely replace the graft, so it's not a fast process. Possibly in your case, based on what my Doc has told me, there's still plenty of time to see improvement. While it's hard to be optimistic when you're hurting, what other choices do we have? At least you've had surgery on both hips, so possibly you'll come out of this with good mobility on both hips in the same timeframe. For me, I've still got another core decompression on the left hip to look forward to (Not!) Probably the one thing that my Doc told me on the first day that I met him, which really threw me for a loop, is that at the end of the tunnel the light is not the train, it's THA. Regardless of what most optimistic Doc's would like you to believe, even if your CD's/grafts are successful, a number of years down the road you will still develop OA and have to have your hips replaced. It's a whole lot better to delay THA to when you're older than younger, so how ever many more years that you can get our of your God-given hips will be an advantage. Good luck and keep in touch with your progress. Your just 2 or 3 weeks ahead of me so I'm hoping that we'll both be seeing improvement. JackT