About me
Born with a dislocated hip, I had a body cast as an infant and a bar connecting my baby shoes when I was learning to walk. As a result of this, my toes turned in, so I wore leg braces attached to round-toed saddle oxford shoes for my entire third-grade year. After that, I got to go to McMahan’s shoe store in Atlanta and pick out corrective shoes – big, bulky, ugly shoes. I remember one pair being olive green and black in the saddle oxford style. Just imagine…
Fast forward to high school. My kneecaps kept jumping out of joint. I would be standing in a doorway, and then all of a sudden, I was on the floor. The orthopedic doctor wanted to stabilize my kneecaps. The procedure was called the Houzer Method. It involved cutting through the kneecap and moving it down and over, stabilizing it with a staple. I was not in favor of doing this at all. But I lost that battle and ended up having 8-inch scars down the front of each leg when I was fifteen.
I tore the right one out when I fell not long after the surgery and had to have it done again when I was sixteen. Fast forward to my fifties when my knee started caving in. Apparently, they now know that the Houzer method causes cartilage to erode and a need for replacement knees. My right knee was replaced in 2004 and the left in 2009.
My left hip was replaced in 2015. The doctor said since it was dislocated at birth, it grew incorrectly. That went fairly well until I had to have foot fusion surgery on my right foot for arthritis in 2018. The foot surgery was successful, but it made other joints in that foot unstable and the spring after it was done, I began to have trouble moving my left hip forward. The foot surgeon told me to go to a podiatrist. I tried one at Baptist Hospital who said, “If you want me to take your hardware out, I’ll run the other way.” He did measure my leg length with x-rays and said they were very close to equal with the left one being a tiny bit shorter, but not enough to correct. He said my back was the problem, not my hip. Went to a back doctor who said it was the hip. The hip was still so tight, and nothing would help. I went to six physical therapists with no relief. I tried two chiropractors and an acupuncturist. Nothing helps. So, I changed hip doctors, and this is the one who did all the tests. The one who okay my foot surgery long ago, told me to seek another opinion.
You just have to miss the orthopedists who used to treat the whole body. At least they seemed to care how different parts of the body work together.
Now I am struggling with the foot and the hip. They don’t work together, but the doctors are specialists and only treat the one part. The podiatrist who is treating my foot seems to be genuinely interested as does the hip doctor. Maybe, just maybe, something can be improved. I would settle for just one thing to get better.
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