A Hip & Knee Update
Jun. 22nd, 2025 12:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badfalconYou know how you always hear that healthcare in this country is a postcode lottery? Yeah you don't realise how true that is until you move postcodes
So as y'all know I've been having joint issues since I was a teenager, had surgery for a tracking issue on my right knee, and knew that I had 'asymmetry between the ilia and the orientation of the acetabulum' and that my left leg was shorter than the other. I understood that my pelvis was wonky, basically.
But Devon, despite being the ones who completely fucking missed it all when I was a kid, are making up for it now, and I have a full report with a few different things going on. Some of it I expected, and some of it was new to me.
🦴 The Summary (In Doctor Speak):
Mild degenerative changes in both hips (early osteoarthritis)
Subchondral sclerosis (thickening of bone under worn cartilage)
Narrowing of joint spaces
Bony lipping and overcoverage of the femoral heads (impingement)
Asymmetry between the two sides of my pelvis and hip sockets
A projection (a kind of bony overgrowth) from the top of both hip sockets
Mild degenerative changes in the right knee, with some tendon-related inflammation
🧠What That Actually Means:
In plain English: my hips are wearing down a bit - not dramatically, but enough to show changes on imaging. There’s less cushioning cartilage, and the bone underneath is reacting by thickening. There are also bony overgrowths, and my hip sockets are shaped in a way that is putting extra stress on the joint.
That asymmetry between the two sides of my pelvis and the “extended projection” from my hips sockets means I’ve had an unusual joint structure for a long time and has grown extra bone to balance it out...
The right knee is joining the party too, with some inflammation where tendons anchor into bone. Delightful.
🧠So What Now?
I have an invitation to a 'long-term condition care planning' appointment where I find out what happens next. I've been in chronic pain for like 30 years and I didn't even know 'long-term condition care' was a thing until now. The doctor's report says the arthritis is 'mild' in terms of x-ray severity but as anyone with chronic pain knows, “mild” on paper doesn’t always match what your body feels.
Next steps will probably include:
- Physio, to keep everything moving and reduce pain
- Maybe pain meds or topical treatments
- Watching how things evolve and deciding whether more imaging is needed (like MRI) to get a clearer picture, especially around the hip structure
💬 How I’m Feeling:
Honestly, it's a lot. I'm tired. I'm frustrated and angry. But there's a lot of relief. There's a name for it. There is actually something wrong. It's not been in my head since I was a teenager. Knowing there's a structural reason for what I'm feeling, for the pain I've been in for so long, for how I struggle to move, for my day-to-day experiences for decades.
And I have a Li who can advocate for me when I can't do it myself. I've spent so many years not being listened to, to being brushed aside - but Li is helping me ask for the support I need, speaking up for me, for being incredibly clear to medical professionals that this is not something we're happy for me to have to just live with any more without further investigation. She's the one who insisted on the x-rays when we saw the doctor last month for the pain and stiffness and got the bursitis diagnosis.
So now we have the start of some answers an
