New Suggestion from my Physiotherapist

Had a very interesting (if you want to call it that) visit with my physiotherapist today.

She always starts with, "How have you been?"

Of course lately the answer is usually, "Not much change, my hips hurt like a bugger."

Every so often, she asks me to describe, in detail, what hurts, where it hurts, when it hurts the most, yada, yada, yada (the usual medic/patient exchange).

Today, when I told her that my first waking realization is the burning pain in my hips, she asked me to show her where on my body that fire was located.

Once again, I clutched my hip joints and assured her that the fire was coming from my hips.

From which she determined that, usually, in her experience (and she is a mere three months my junior so she has been in her profession for more than a few years) when someone describes that kind of pain they are describing bursitis.

Hey, that's what my doctor suggested was the problem ... oh ... I don't know... about 22 years ago when we first started struggling with this issue.

Let's not forget that the pain in my groin that I have also enjoyed for the past few years is indicative of something other than bursitis!  We'll wait for the MRI results to suggest the cause for that discomfort.

Back to my physiotherapist and the suggestions that emanated from her "bursitis" diagnosis.

I asked, then, what one does if bursitis of the hip is in fact what we are dealing with (let's face it, we've known for 22 years ...)

She assured me that thus far, in the years she has been treating me, there is nothing that we haven't tried and discounted for one reason or another, or that we are not already doing for it.

Short of taking anti-inflammatory drugs (which I cannot use because of my asthma), there is virtually nothing else we can do.

I mean, really, how the heck do you not use your hip joint long enough for it to recover from having been inflamed? We've already tried the injections, which we know don't work. 

Her suggestion to help deal with the increased lack of mobility and the increased pain (in spite of the weight loss) that I am noticing?

She was hesitant to mention it to me because she knows how difficult it was on my psyche when I was forced to break down and have a stair lift installed in our home (also her suggestion).

But, she says, for those situations when I get up from bed and I am so stiff that I absolutely cannot walk from the bed to the bathroom (and, without my telling her how bad it was, she managed to portray an excellent rendition of exactly what I look like as I rise from my bed each morning) without risking falling and doing serious injury to myself, I should really consider having a walker for use in my home.

And she has one to lend me if I want to try one first.

She wanted to stress that, at this pont, a walker would only be necessary while I'm in my home.

But it's a slippery slope.