Category Miscellany
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Many of you who know me know that there are days when I limp, and on occasion I even use a cane. The reason for all of that is that I was involved in a very bad car accident in March 1995. I broke the following:

• my right ankle
• both knees (tibula/fibia breaks)
• left hip dislocated and cracked
• three broken right ribs and punctured lung
• left scapula (shoulder blade)
• my left cheek bone
• I had over 400 stitches in my neck and facial area
• and I have a teflon plate in my left cheekbone/ocular orb

Needless to say, I was a mess. Since then I've had quite a few surgeries to clean up my face and keep my legs working - replaced both of my ACLs, all cartilage removed from my knees (they were more scar tissue than working cartilage), and many arthroscopic scopings to keep my knees cleaned out. I have been fortunate enough to have avoided any additional surgeries for about the last 4 years.

The good news is that overall, I am doing really well. As I said earlier I don't have any cartilage in my knees anymore, so they get sore. I've also re-torn my right ACL, but it is still pretty stable. But my hip has gotten much worse.

My left hip has been hurting for a very long time. I have been going to a pain management specialist for many years. Well, it has gotten so bad now that I am now in constant pain - and my recent trip to Germany has aggravated it enough to finally propel me to go see my orthopedist again, which I did this week. It turns out I have heterotopic ossification (HO) - which means that I have bony growths growing from my hip bone and my pelvis, and they are trying to fuse together. Take a look at the images below:


My left hip - the area in red is the heterotopic ossification. You can see the bony growth between my femur and my pelvis - all that cloudy stuff where it should be clear.

The pain has worsened lately because the two growths are actually touching when I move my leg to walk - it's like a meat grinder in there now. I discovered that there are four classifications of HO: Class I - which is just small bony pieces floating in the tissue; through Class IV - which is complete fusing of the femur to the pelvis. I have Class III, which is less than 1cm between the growths - you can see that in the image below.


You can see the HO more - and see that there is hardly any gap in the growth.

So, my orthopedist has recommended (strongly) that I get the offending bone growths removed ASAP, because it is only going to get worse. They are getting the insurance approval now, and then the surgery will be scheduled soon. I imagine it will happen within the next 2-3 weeks. I will be out of commission for a few days. I have to have a radiation treatment to prevent the bony growth from coming back (700 rads, or whatever the measurement is for radiation - don't remember what he said, just the number). Afterwards I'll have some physical therapy to rebiuld my muscle strength, and I'll plan on using my martial arts to do the bulk of the muscle rebuilding.

The good news is that I should regain full mobility in my hip - and the best part is I won't have hardly any more pain once I am healed.

I'll keep you all posted - and hopefully you've all learned a new word or phrase today. See if you can use it in a sentence, ok?

Rock
**The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up.