Pain Update: Answers!

It's been about 16 months since this pain began, and I finally have some answers, though I worry there still may be more to the issue, but I'm always the one to think the worst. For the past 3 months or so, the pain has been at its worst, and most days I can do no more than sit up in bed without wanting to scream in agony. (I say wanting because, if you know anything about chronic pain, you know that, after a while, you learn to stop screaming and suffer in silence: Your body adapts, but the pain doesn't necessarily lessen.)

Anyway, my fiance essentially had to drag me to the emergency room this time because, after my last hospital experience during which I was accused of seeking narcotics and sent home in pain with no hope of relief, I didn't want to put myself through anything like that again. However, since I couldn't lift myself or even turn over in bed, I figured it needed to happen.

After a horrible experience of being repeatedly outed by no fewer than 7 staff members--even though we told each one about the issue--the doctors decided to do something different. Now, I've been pointing to the same spot for the past 16 months and explaining exactly what the pain feels like and which positions are most agonizing, yet no one thought it would be a good idea to take an x-ray of that area. And I wanted to cry when I heard what they found.

I have a protuberance at the right anterior femoral head/neck junction that is causing femoral acetabular impingement, which actually could explain all of my symptoms. They also found mild degenerative changes in both SI joints and my pubic symphysis, though they don't believe the arthritis is severe enough to result in pain like this. But this news is a hell of a lot better than what I had been thinking.

I still need to follow-up with someone, but I'm no longer fumbling around in the dark hoping to stumble across an answer. Given that this has been going on for over a year, I worry that I will still need surgery to correct the issue, but 4 months or so of recovery from a minimally invasive procedure would be well worth it if i could actually enjoy my life again. Maybe by next pride I'll be able to go out and participate instead of watching videos from my bed.

I'm ready to be myself again. Here's hoping that, one year from now, I will again feel at home in my body--that it will no longer feel like a prison due to these limitations. Though I've learned a lot about pain and disability from this experience, I'm ready for it to be over, though that alone seems selfish, given that many people do not have that option. I have too many thoughts right now!