Completely Insane

I've been trotting down the same primrose path I trotted down years ago. Here there be dragons. The signs are there, but I won't be heeding them. Babble you say? Nonsense, it all has a point.

Several years ago (namely when I was pregnant with Little Man), I started having difficulty with my left hip. I went to too many doctors to try to determine what was wrong. They x-rayed, MRIed and injected my hip. They gave me drugs ranging from Vioxx to narcotics. They sent me to physical therapy. I walked with a cane for a few years straight. When my hip became irritated, I'd get a cortizone injection and walk with a cane for a few days while things healed. I compensate for the pain, but after the last cortizone injection ate away at the surrounding fat and muscle (typical for these types of injections) leaving a slight dimple, I stopped.

I made an appointment with the orthopedist I hadn't seen in three or four years. I went in and told her I was still having pain. Now I knew when the pain was worse and what made it better. When she looked back at her records, she realized I'd originally came to her with this problem in 2002. Yes, it took 2 years before I saw a specialist for the joint. There were other things we were worried about that had sent us on a wild goose chase.

She seems determined to get to the bottom of my hip issue. She did an xray and found a slight bump on the femaral head below the hip bone which might be causing pressure when sitting. Then a week ago she did an xray guided injection into the joint space to determine where the pain was coming from and whether to order contrast with the MRI. So today in about an hour, I get to crawl onto a cold table, close my eyes as they shove my body into a tube that closely resembles a coffin. And yes, they'll be injecting my hip with contrast.

The primrose path? Hope. Do I dare to feel hope that they'll finally find out what is wrong? Or do I get the standard...'Huh, everything looks fine. Oh well, here's some drugs.' It's hard to be hopeful when you've been cynical for the past few years. I think it's the fear of hoping only to be let down again and having to go back to the acceptance that this isn't going to change. Some days will be bad, others will be tolerable and some will be a blessing. Dragons, fear, same thing. You hope for something fixable, you pray for nothing bad, you end up in the same position you were before. No closer to the truth. It's scary. It's terrifying. It's life.

I know that the injection of the contrast is going to put more pressure on the joint than the injection last week did. I could barely walk a few days after the last injection. I accept the fact that this might not change anything, but I'll survive the pain in the hope that something good will come from it. Here there be dragons.