Putting Socks On (by sarah)
The last two weeks have been amazing, wonderful and awful at the same time - as always with our bad luck field. So yesterday Al was already in pain when he took the kids to Country File Live, they all enjoyed themselves but he was tanked up on pain killers to survive the day - what ever he did it was going to be a tanked up on pain killers day.
By the time he got home he was in considerable pain and we did all the normal - hot baths and massage and his physio - but over the last year his hip has been getting alot worse again including him having to miss Krav and park runs because he can barely walk.
This morning I had to put his socks on for him - this is not the sciatica - this is his hip (which may or may not be part of the cause for the sciatica).
He's been a bit depressed about this - the amount of pain he is in is well... loads. But more than that it means going back to the Dr to talk about hip replacements - something he has desperately been trying to ward off. Just after Mary was born he was in lots of pain and the Dr told him that his options where to pay for physical manipulation to try and slow the wear on the joint down or he would def. be having the hip replacement before he was 40.
Obvs. hip replacements are not something you really want to be getting into before you are 40 so we paid knowing it might not work or would only work for a while but hopefully would get him to past his 40th birthday. The treatment was no longer avalible on the NHS though the hip replacement would be. It worked really well for a few years and made a huge difference. Initially after Mary was born we both had mobility issues which were fortunately slightly different but we would have to co-operate to change the babies bottom!
It was a bit of a nightmare time capped off with him and the baby getting pnumonia and a house move. All that aside we had been hopeful - the manipulation did wonders and for the first time that he could remember - standing still did not hurt him!
Basically up until that point his leg had been rammed up into the hip joint, compressing and wearing it out. This was left over from some child hood accident - we don't know what but the Dr was surprised he did not remember it as it was have been painful. It was possibly falling down the stairs or something.
Anyway the joint is already worn and we were just buying time. He's been doing the strengthening exercises and working on general fitness and posture which need correcting... but then about a year ago it started to occassionally pain him again and has just been getting worse and worse and of course because he was looking after me with my zillions of hospital appointments he didn't really want to say anything as it's going to be a whole ball of medical stuff for him too etc...
Well his now shuffling about increasingly with little let up, yesterday had him walking about on hills so he is quiet frankly in agony :'(
He tends not to say when things are wrong with him but he is actually really struggling at the moment - so please be nice! No one likes it when someone else has to put their socks on for them!
Mon 7th Aug 2017 10:12 am 
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By John Cowan, Mon 7th Aug 2017 @ 8:26 pm
My wife Gale has had one hip replacement and is going to have another (she's 74). She recommends them; after the recovery PT, she has had so much less pain in the replaced ("new") hip than in the natural ("old") one.
By sarah, Mon 21st Aug 2017 @ 10:04 pm
Thanks - looks like it might be early onset arthritis at the mo but we will have to wait and see :/ Glad your wife's hip worked out 🙂