Bad manners at the doctors office

Hi, new blog!

My new name will be The Accidental Bitch, or TAB. Also note the new picture. I think she's hot and though I may never wear that exact outfit or play with my hair in a spotlight with my back turned to people, we're going to pretend that that's me.

So anyway, enough about me.

Haha just kidding.

I injured my hip in August, my last week before returning to school. I had just done some light jogging, per the instructions of my physical therapist (my leg had been hurting for about a year and I was getting physical therapy to supposedly fix it). I was in that oh-so-sexy V position, bending to my left, when all of a sudden I heard a distinctive popping sound. "Shit fuck shit," I believe I said, getting up to see if it would hurt to walk. It didn't, but I continued to swear intermittently.

I sat down to dinner with my parents, and when I tried to get up I found that I couldn't walk. My muscle began twitching in my leg every few minutes (or if I was walking, every few steps) and it was incredibly painful. I made an appointment to see an orthopedic doctor. We'll call him the "bad doctor." The bad doctor told me that I had pulled a muscle. Having dealt with an injury on my leg that hadn't gone away for a year, I was skeptical.

"What if that's not what it is?" I asked him.

"Well, there's a small chance that it could be something else," he replied soothingly, "but I'm almost 100% sure you just have a bad muscle pull."

I wasn't soothed. "But I heard a 'pop'," I protested.

"Well if you want to, we can get an xray and MRI and I'll prove it to you," he told me.

Please do prove it to me, Mr. Smartypants, I thought. "Okay, I'd like to do that."

I got an X-ray and he took a look at it, saying "See, there's nothing wrong here. There are no abnormalities in your hip, everything looks good. If you still want to get the MRI, you can go schedule one and we'll call you with the results."

I scheduled an MRI and he called a few days later. "You have some interesting results," he started. I was smug for a few seconds before I realized that overall, that wasn't a good thing. He told me I have a torn acetabular labrum, didn't describe what it was, and expressed doubt about the necessity of surgically correcting it. I got off the phone with him and had no idea what to do.

I was soon able to walk without immediate pain, but every night my leg would ache. After a month and a half, I did some research on the good 'ol Internet to see what this little "acetabular labrum" was and how to fix it. After researching for several hours, I found that the acetabular labrum is a piece of cartilage in the hip socket. Recovery without surgery is highly unlikely, so I called a surgeon and made an appointment. January 5th.

I saw the doctor on Wednesday for my consultation. He put my Xray up and said "You have some abnormalities in your hip." The bad doctor was wrong. The good doctor (this one) said he could fix the abnormality during surgery and I would hopefully never have a similar injury again.

On my way out, I sat down with a surgery scheduler who told me what to do and what not to do before the surgery. I asked her, "I heard that a lot of times before surgery they give you medication to help with anxiety, would that be possible?" Not that I'm a druggie or anything, but my dad had told me they would probably give me some happy pills and if I could get a prescription for Valium... all the better.

"He isn't really one to give out Valium before surgery," she responded.

"Oh, okay," I shrugged, but on the inside I was mourning my fleeting chance at a relaxing pre-surgery vacation.

And then she had to be a total bitch. "You just have to remind yourself that it's not a major surgery. You know, it's done with a scope so it's no big deal." The surgery is done with tiny instruments that they snake up through two tiny incisions in the thigh. It's called minimally invasive surgery. But still. Did she have to act like the surgery was comparable to taking a 90 minute nap? It shouldn't matter how big a deal the surgery is compared to open heart surgery; if people are freaking out over it, they can freak out. I decided to remind her of this.

"Yeah, well, it's not as though I get surgery every day." I glared at her and then smiled. "But okay, no big deal!!"