About 8 or 9 years ago Josh started having sharp pains in his hip joint. It wasn't constant - sometimes it would disappear for months or years and then flare up again. He's had MRI's done and nothing showed up. He went to physical therapy and that seemed to help temporarily. Then last year when he started training for triathlons he noticed it a lot more, and the pain was severe enough he wanted to finally do something about it. So he went to an orthopedic here in Midland and from his Xrays and MRI they noticed he had a torn labrum, and that part of his femur was irregularly shaped and cutting into the labrum and tissues of the hip joint. Or something like that...
So we were referred to a doctor in Dallas who would perform a hip arthroscopy - a procedure that few doctors are specialized in. It was a pain to get this thing scheduled and approved because our insurance company thought it was "experimental" or something, and also because the one doctor who did these surgeries was also the team physician for none other than the DALLAS COWBOYS. Yeah. As a true fan, Josh completely understood that Dr. Muller would be busy tending to Dez Bryant's ankle or Jason Witten's shoulder...so we waited months to finally set a date.
Josh went in for sugery the week before Thanksgiving. His mom came to Midland and stayed at our house with the girls, while Josh and I spent a couple days in Dallas.
The surgery was a success!
Of course, we were both a little nervous moments before the surgery, but had confidence in the surgical team. We said our goodbyes, and like 20 seconds later the anesthesia kicked in and Josh was out. He barely even remembers rolling out into the hallway to go the OR. I was anxious because it was a 2-1/2 hr surgery, plus extra time to let him "wake up" before they'd let me come see him. Lots of waiting in the waiting room.
After the surgery, it took a while for Josh to recover. They couldn't give him a lot of morphine while the anesthesia was still wearing off, so he was in a lot of pain, and very uncomfortable for the 2-3 hours following the surgery. Then he was just tired. But we had eachother and that was nice.
We later met with the doctor to discuss the surgery and he said everything went well and is repaired, but that they found a problem that hadn't been diagnosed with the MRI and other tests before surgery. When they were repairing the labrum they encountered a lot of these little foreign bodies all tangled up in his hip joint. They're basically pieces of cartilage, but there's no clear explanation of why they are there. But thankfully they are gone now, and the doc says "..yeah, you had a reason to be in a lot of pain"
So now he has recovered. He was on crutches for only a week (one of the longest weeks of my life!) and now is able to resume all of his regular activities with the exception of running and certain exercises, which he'll take a break from for 6 months.
Then, its time to train for the Ironman :)
