Follow Up Appointment, September 2017
I return for the xray report, which showed mild arthritis in both hips. “I can give you a prescription for Celebrex,” she said. “Losing weight would help.” “Eventually you might need hip replacement surgery.”
What?! Hip replacement surgery?! I couldn’t go there at all, it seemed so extreme. . .!
I asked if there were other options, explaining my aversion to prescription drugs and my background as a movement professional. She softened somewhat, sharing her own experience with running in marathons. She gave me two links to products on the internet. One for a curcumin-based anti-inflammatory supplement called Curcum-Evail. Through her I was able to get a professional rate.
The second one was a challenging workout created by strength and conditioning trainer Kiya Knight for the muscles surrounding the hip joints that I dubbed my Ass-Kicking workout.
(The specific video workout I learned is no longer available, but here's a link to me doing it a little too fast and somewhat imperfectly, pre-hip surgery. See if you can see the glitch in my right hip . . .)
I eagerly pursued both of her suggestions. I especially liked that the Ass-Kicking Workout challenged the muscles of the hip joints individually as well as simultaneously, so that my weaker right buttock muscles could be made as strong as my left buttock muscles. Somewhere along the line I learned that while I am used to exercising muscles of the hip girdle, I needed to "up" the challenge of the workout to get the muscles strong enough to take pressure off the joint.
Glory be, after several weeks of these treatments, I felt much less pain! She told me that the regular Tylenol I was taking would not work for the nights that I still had pain. Ibuprofen or naproxen would work better but I should avoid using them regularly. The Epsom salts baths I liked after a long, active day were a good idea, she said.
