The Thigh Bone's Connected to the Hip Bone

Back in September/October, I started getting very bad hip pain every now and then in the evenings. Over a period of three weeks or so, I realized the pain showed up every time I carried the Drew Monster for more than a couple of minutes during the day or if I stood or walked a lot. So I made a conscious effort to limit my Drew carrying time and take more breaks during walks and long periods of standing. The pain mostly went away, flaring up much less often and only as a dull ache as I went to bed.

Then in late December/early January, that dull ache turned into something more pronounced at night and started happening every night and made it very hard to get to sleep. I decided it was time to go see the doctor. She did some poking and prodding and determined I likely had bursitis. She took some X-rays, gave me a steroid injection in my hip to get to work on the inflammation and put me on some NSAIDs. By that night, the pain was gone, having been replaced by a creeping numbness along my legs. Nothing too startling, just a bit of that "pins and needles" thing you get after a a limb's "gone to sleep". Still, it didn't seem normal, and the last time I had numbness like that, I had to have surgery on my knee, so back I went to the doctor. She muttered something about sciatica, ordered an MRI, and decided it was time to hand me off to an orthopedic specialist.

My insurance first approved the MRI and the specialist, so I got everything arranged for me to take my Happy Pills and get stuffed into the terrifying tube this past Friday. The day before my appointment, my insurance suddenly decided to deny my claim. I'm fairly certain they only nixed the MRI at this point, but I haven't heard anything back from the orthopedics guy, so they might have pulled the plug there too.

Meanwhile, my hip is feeling weaker and I'm compensating for it by using my quads more and more (not necessarily a bad thing; my thighs could use some toning), and straining my other hip. That's right, now my other hip is starting on the same journey the problematic one began last year. Sigh. I really miss the health insurance I had back in Colorado. And I'm beginning to regret trying to get this resolved as at least before I knew exactly how the pain worked and how to live around it, even if it did disrupt my sleep. That pain was easier to manage than this weak leg phenomenon. Drew and I are going back to Colorado for the DDJ tomorrow and I'm a bit worried that my hip will choose a very inopportune time to give out while we're there.

The last I knew, I was scheduled to see the ortho guy in a week and a half. Here's hoping my body holds itself together until then.