I then went to, , my doctor, made an appointment with the local, hip person, I had a steroid injection in the hip – what do you call it – cortisone injection in my hip, which did get rid of the pain for about three weeks, and then it came back, and it was, you know, just as bad. So we discussed surgery, I was shocked that I needed to do that at my age and I’d always been physically fit so, and I was at this point, maybe in my middle fifties, so I was shocked that, I needed this at such a young age.
And anyway my husband and I did a lot of research on hip replacements at this point, since it looked like I was going to have to do this, and of course you can even see... even an untrained person can see from the... from the x-ray what... what... that... that you can actually see, I mean it’s... it’s not a subtle thing, the hip is a great big ball and socket joint, and you can see when there is no cartilage in between and the bone is wearing away and so even I could see on the x-ray that it was not what it should look like.
So I did a lot of research and as I say, my husband is very into being autonomous and well informed and making decisions for you, even medical decisions for yourself, and so we looked at a lot of different types of hip replacements, and of course here in [city] the [Hospital name] has got some very good surgeons who do conventional hip replacements, you know, very well, I’m sure, but I was intro... I read a lot about the Birmingham hip replacement which uses titanium, and uses a very big, it’s much more... it’s called Birmingham Hip Resurfacing because it conserves much more bone than a conventional hip replacement, and it involves a large ball, , section, and both of these things are very good if you’re younger because if the conservation of bone means you can have a conventional hip replacement should you need, further, a... revision of the surgery, and that’s a problem. If you’ve had a conventional hip replacement once it’s very difficult to do a revision of that. And that’s why people often say, ‘Oh, you’re too young to have a hip replacement, you just have to soldier on,’ even though you’re, you know, you’re really in pain, and you... you... ‘Because if we do this now, you know, it’s not going to last you out.’ So this was one reason to go for the Birmingham resurfacing, and the second reason was that with the very big ball section, it doesn’t dislocate very frequently, and for both those reasons, because I’m younger and I thought I might need to... I thought I might outlive a conventional hip replacement, with a bit of luck there, I hope I outlive it, and because I wanted to... I wanted to play tennis still and walk my dog, and ride my bicycle, so that’s why I... I plumped for the Birmingham resurfacing.
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