I haven’t written about my pain stuff in a while. I think last time was just after my first shot at PRP. At the time, I didn’t know it wasn’t going to work. Neither did the second PRP shot. At that time, I latched onto what was possibly my last shot – the guy who’d done several corticosteroid shots in me (none of which helped) in my sciatic nerve (both down in the hip, and then again where it exits the spine), and in my ischial bursa, and also implanted pain stimulator electrodes in my spine had told me that I needed my ischial bursa removed. The only problem was that nobody does it – I talked to doctors all over the place, including New York City and Kansas City.
By luck, somebody in r/ChronicPain in reddit responded to an old post of mine to tell me that this doctor in Houston did an ischial bursectomy on him, and it had helped him immensely. This set off a long process of trying to get that doctor’s opinion on whether I need an ischial bursectomy and whether he’d do one on me without multiple trips to Houston. The doctor’s office sent me a very detailed protocol for the MRI that they wanted. My primary care doctor didn’t want to order it, because she didn’t really know how to get the local MRI centers to follow the protocol. However, my pain doctor talked to a couple of doctors of radiology and got a way to get my protocol done.
When I got to the MRI appointment, I didn’t get to see a doctor, but the radiology technician was really into this challenge. She’d even read the journal article that the protocol refers to. The MRI process was a bit longer than usual. The amusing thing was that the next day they called me and the radiology doctor wanted me to come back the next day so they could do their usual protocol and compare it to the Houston doctor’s protocol at no charge to me (or my insurance). I had nothing better to do, and I’m interested in more data.
I don’t have the tools to look at the actual MRI scans, but the second MRI got the usual radiologists summary. And for somebody hoping for a possible path to a cure, it was mostly terrible news. They said there was no evidence of ischial bursitis, and only mild hamstring tendonopathy. However, there was a bunch of stuff going on in the hip joint itself, most of which was highly technical and hard to interpret.
I had to jump through some hoops to get imagery to the Houston doctor, and I waited for their response. And their response was a complete surprise. They think I need a hip replacement! They said I have too much arthritis to be a candidate for arthroscopic surgery.
Well, the good news is that there isn’t a shortage of doctors here in Rochester who can do a hip replacement. Funny, all this time I’ve ignored the pain in my hips, because it seemed less important than the pain in my sit bone area. The pain in my hips didn’t stop me from paddling or walking, it was just a constant thing like my knee pain.