my summer sucks--or how I broke my hip

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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First off, Architecture as a market has been slow, so I have taken much of the summer off without pay. Luckily my wife and I saved enough and live far enough below our means to survive it. And summers off in Seattle—what isn’t to like right? So I was going to make the most of the summer

And what better time to get in shape right? I turn 50 this year and why not whip myself into shape! I was already going 3 times a week but bumped it up to 5-6 times a week. Big mistake number 1.

I ended up pulling my right quad. Go to the Sport Medicine Doctor right after Memorial Day. Confirmed pulled quad, but after 3 weeks it was getting better and decided to go to the coast with my wife to celebrate. Walking up the stairs to the hotel room I hear a loud POP and collapse on the stair. The rush me via ambulance to the hospital 30 minutes away and the ER Doctor spends 2 minutes with me and determines I pulled my quad again. Big mistake number 2.

So I go into Physical Therapy for the past 8 weeks on my quad (which I did actually re-pull) but the last 3-4 weeks I am NOT seeing any improvement. I am still on the crutches and the PT feels I should be walking, I am walking about 30% of the time on one crutch, but it hurts like hell when I do. I am trying real hard, but I sense the PT’s think I am just being a wimp, and I am starting to think maybe they are right.

Monday I go back to the original Sports Medicine Doctor and am all prepared for him to tell me that I should get off the crutches and just ‘man up’. He runs a bunch of tests on my quad and says that you have good strength on your quad, it isn’t 100% but I should be able to walk, etc on it. So he has me do a couple of other tests. After each test he says ‘you should be able to do that—something is going on here’.

So he orders x-rays. Long story short—I have been walking around on a broken hip for the last eight weeks! So Monday night I went into surgery and now have 3 screws holding my femoral head to the shaft. And another eight weeks on the damn crutches! What I had done is this: screws in hip Basically the ER doc missed the broken hip, but then she only spent 2 minutes with me and everyone since then has gone on the assumption I only had a torn quad.

I do feel vindicated though—hell no wonder I wasn’t getting better, I had a fucking broken hip—hello!! Jesus I must be tougher then I thought I was, to walk around on a broken hip for eight weeks. I mean it hurt, but it didn’t seem that bad. Nonetheless I am right back to where I was, sitting on this chair in front of my laptop watching my great summer pass me by.

Fuck!! But I do have new pain medications, last time it was Hydrocodone and this time I have Oxycodone and Oxycontin and also a shot I have to give myself to thin my blood (evidently blood clots are a big concern in hip injuries).

So wish me luck—by the time I am off these crutches I will be 50. Odd thing is that I actually lost 10 pounds while recuperating. I am able to do dumbbells, etc. so I know it isn’t all muscle loss—but I can’t get my own food, and my wife has been feeding me. So I ended up eating very healthy and not the usual crap I ate and thus lost 10 pounds.

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Wow. Luck, man.

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Good Luck, Hakuna. Glad your sports medicine guy was thourough.

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I’m sorry it took “them” so long to get your diagnosis right, but glad you’re on the right road now.

I know it wasn’t your intention but I’m goin got take as the moral of your story that getting in shape is dangerous…back to the couch for me.

Best wishes for a speedy and full recovery.

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Whoa. I’m glad you found out what was wrong. Amazing that you could move around on something broken! Get better soon. And remember: fifty’s nifty!

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I know that amazes me too. I was driving, walking on the treadmill, riding a recumbant bike, etc—I shouldn’t have been able to do any of those things. Guess if your mind doesn’t know it isn’t broken you can do all sorts of things.

The hard part now is to NOT put weight on that leg when I am on the crutch. The message I have had for the last 6 weeks is to start putting weight on that leg–so it is a total different mindset to remember to NOT put weight on the leg.

I don’t blame the docs for missing it–the quad was pulled and that was much more logical as to the injury. It isn’t like our health industry allows random tests to determine things, there is a cost-benefit analysis that I am sure doctors have to go through.

And gwendee– off the damn couch!

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Damn. That sucks! But I’m glad they found out what’s wrong with you, ultimately. Plus, it happened when you were on leave anyway, so you don’t have to miss any work.

Oh, and while the blood-thinning shots suck and leave hellish bruises, oxycodone rocks.

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Um… Happy Birthday?

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Good lord - not the summer you wanted. Sorry you have to deal, but at least you chased down the real cause. Here’s to a speedy recovery and good pain meds.:wink:

Any reading you particularly wanted to get done? Full seasons of shows on DVD?

Some sort of Howard Roark-like “perfect architecture” project you’ve wanted to design? :slight_smile:

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well now I have the perfect comeback for my 14 year old daughter when she tells me life is unfair.

“unfair–yes it is. But you want to talk unfair–walk around for 8 weeks on a broken hip and then come talk to me about unfair. Now go put your big girl panties on and get it done”

So at least I have that to use :smiley:

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You’re hardcore.

Any idea how you can break a hip walking on it?
Anyone suggest bone density testing?

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Have you ever broken a bone before? The few times I have the pain has always been unique - the second time I broke a bone I knew it because the pain felt the same as the first time. It’s not that the pain was any worse than say, a deep cut, it just felt different.

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I asked the Doctor that as I was concerned that this is something older people get and I was concerned maybe there was a bone issue. He said, nope. Older people break their hip from falling and because their bones are fragile. He didn’t feel that was an issue here at all.

He described this as a stress fracture from running. He used a wire coat hanger as the analogy–you can bend it back and forth and it holds, but sometimes it breaks. He didn’t think anything was wrong with my bone density. My take is that I likely had a slight stress fracture when I did those stupid intervals and then when I fell on the stair it stressed it enough to break it. But I don’t really know to be honest. I have a follow up with him in a week and I will ask him more questions then. He sort of took me by surprise on Monday!

Dag Otto–never broken a bone in my life, actually never been in a hospital before. First time for me for all of these things and so I don’t have a frame of reference. Overall I am in very good shape, just not as young as I used to be!

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Huh. That’s interesting. I’ve never had a broken bone (knock wood!)
I will say that the one time I got gall stones, I thought “Hmmmm. This feels just like kidney stones, but in the wrong place”. So I understand what you mean about the pain feeling the same.

From the OP, it sounds like he broke the hip working out at the gym, not just by walking on it. Still, a bone density test isn’t a bad idea, especially if he has good insurance that will pay for it.

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Does this mean you are Officially OLD ? Were you issued an offical Old Person’s Cane and suspenders? Were you given authorization to finally shout, " GET OFF MAH LAWN!" at any kid who gets within ten feet of your lawn?
Best of health to you, OLD MAN and may you win gobs of money in the lottery very soon!

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You sound like my damn family–all my brothers and sisters are calling and giving me the old man story. My dad actually got into an accident on Monday (he is fine but his car is totalled) and they are saying they will set us up both in the same home. family–gotta love em, right?

And I already tell the kids to get off my damn lawn, but I have been doing that for 10 years.

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I fell and broke my ankle this winter, and it didn’t hurt at all for a good long while. I knew it was broken by the time I hit the ground because I felt the bones break and my foot felt disconnected from my leg. There was just that weird disconnected feeling for a long time.

I got lucky, though - I was laid up on the couch for six weeks in the middle of a Boston winter, so I wasn’t missing much. Hakuna Matata, you gotta work on your timing.

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If it makes you feel better ( It won’t) in the Spring of 2008, I was asked, begged, put at gunpoint to join an all-wimmen’s soccer team.

I hate soccer. Too much running and I barely grasp the concept of positions other than the keeper. My tits are two cups bigger than the last time I played organized sports. Ever had to deal with big boobs?

The only thing that made me perk up was my two best friends forever are on the team. One is A JOCK AND MUST WIN AT ALL COST!!!111!! (she runs the entire farking game.) the other is abouttwenty percent less jocky than the other one but has a huge competitive streak in her as well.

I could care less if we win or lose, as long as I don’t take a ball to the face and my sports bra gives me adequate support, I agreed to play.

So, I put on my new addidas soccer shoes and head out from the car in a downpour with my BFFs to take the pitch. **As we lightly jog to warm up, I pull a hip muscle. **Not twenty feet from the car. (Yeah, it’s funny now.)

It is actually, according to my one BFF, who has a masters in this kinda thing, my butt muscle but connected to the hip thingie.

Over a year later, it is still bugging the crap out of me.

I resigned from this sport that day.

Suck it, Beckham. Suck it hard!

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Don’t forget to add “in the snow, uphill both ways, with no shoes on”. :smiley:

God, Dopers are getting hurt left and right around here! It’s dangerous to be a Doper nowadays. Oh yeah- I hope that you recuperate extra-super-duper-quick-lightning-speed, and get back out there!

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Mmmm… soccer slash… :smiley: