It's All a Waiting Game

October 2014
About a week after my 6 week post op hip visit, my ankle was getting significantly worse. After waiting on line for an hour for my flu shot, the ankle was double in size. I made an appointment to see my primary care physician for the following monday. He took  one look at my ankle that day and said that we need to check for a blood clot and get an xray. Blood clot is my biggest fear. If there is one thing I don' t think I could handle is that. So for the next few hours I was panicking, praying, and waiting. Results were negative and the xray showed a lot of swelling. So, he sent me for the MRI which I thought for sure would show a stress fracture or something like that. It did show swelling, a ligament tear, and some bone swelling of my inner ankle (the one that had been bothering me). At this point I decided to see a foot and ankle doctor just to be sure it wasn't anything else.
Dr. Foot was a little too confident for me, but did a thorough assessment. He stated that "clearly this isn't an ankle issue. This is saphenous neuritis, a tarsal tunnel syndrome". He also said that my MRI was 'nonsignificant' to my case. To this day I don't even know if he looked at the MRI.He was also going to give me a cortisone shot in the ankle but I refused at the last minute. All I could think of was something ELSE bad happening, like sticking it in my nerve by mistake. I broke down crying in his office, saying that I was"done" with all this and I couldn't handle this anymore, He also wrote a prescription for an EMG test, which I never even went for, i only wanted his opinion and surely got it. It's nerve injury.
November 7, 2014
Another office visit with Dr Hip. This would be about my 1 year anniversary going to his office. And I am not out of pain yet. The worst part of the whole thing is the waiting. Wait for the test, wait to see if it gets better, wait and do PT first. It really is a waiting game, hurry up and wait. Stinks especially when you want to be out of pain the 1st day you walk in the office. I told him what Dr. Foot said and Dr Hip agreed to look at my MRI. One thing I like about Dr. Hip is that he always reads your films right in front of you. This way you know that he saw them. He agreed with the tarsal tunnel and didn't think I'd need a shot yet. He said he could put me on Lyrica or Neurontin but I don't like taking stuff unless absolutely necessary. So, I decided to ....just wait!
As for my hip that day, things were going ok. I was starting to have some pain in the front, but I thought it was because the therapist stretched me a little too hard. Dr. Hip said it's scar tissue, and that will, you guessed it, 'go away'. I went to PT a few days later for some nerve desensitizing, but my PT didn't offer this in his facility. So I stopped going to PT and continued exercising at home. And I noticed within the next week or so that the tingling and pain in my ankle was starting to finally subside.