The lows have been more varied. It started with the day I walked into the doctors office with some sore/tight hip flexors and walked out knowing my life had forever changed with the discovery of OA in both hips. I had several ups and downs as I ran the gauntlet of emotions from hopeful to dispondent with each new therapy I tried....chiropractic, massage, yoga, active release, IMS, physiotherapy, alignment clinics etc. Beyond the time and money commitment, each new treatment involved a renewed hope that this would finally be The Answer. And of course there were lows when my pain and mobility worsened regardless.
There were also lows dealing with doctors who couldn't give any definitive answers and certainly couldn't agree with each other on a course of action.
However, the biggest lows for me have always been the feeling like I have lost a significant part of my life. I have always loved physical activity and felt at my best while really pushing my body. As long as I can remember, sports have been my favorite way to socialize with friends as well as deal with my mental paradigm that constantly seeks out self improvement. Maybe I wasn't actually improving myself, but it was sure easy to appease my mental machine by pushing myself physically and testing my limits. Of course losing this side of me, severly if not completely, has led to some lows over the last couple of years. I guess it has been a crash course in aging.
Post surgery was one big low at the beginning. Recovering from surgery, particularly the large blood loss, was much harder than expected. Probably the most difficult part was knowing that I had another surgery upcoming in the near future. Feeling so weak and fragile sucked...and knowing I had to go right back and do it again sucked even more.
Luckily, things have mostly improved since the first few weeks of my first surgery. My recovery from the first hip went so well that by 3 months post op I was feeling at about 80% and confident that I am on my way to 100%. All the tests I went through suggested there is nothing in my blood makeup to account for the severe blood loss and that it was likely just a case of bad luck.
The recovery from my second surgery was much easier in the short term because I didn't have the blood loss of the first, but much harder subsequently because so many more muscles were cut to avoid the bleeding. It has been hard mentally to notice how much slower I have been to recover this time than the first and much more patience has been demanded of me.
However, I am now at a new high. I am getting to the stage where I am more mobile than before the surgery and solidly on the road to recovery. I have virtually no limp and the only pain comes from soft tissue issues which I know will soon go away. I am hopeful that I will fully recover and be able to do whatever I want physically, including any sports I chose to participate in.
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