My Experience Living with Hip Dysplasia

At age 60 my problems and pain from my hip dysplasia are finally over, but it has been a long hard road. I will try to explain what I have learned about this condition, how it affected me, and what I finally had to have done about it.

I was born into a large family and we all were very active and participated intensely in all sorts of sports. I rode my bike all over the place, played very physically outside, and took ballet lessons for about 6 years, beginning at age 7. I was always extremely limber and just thought that I was “double-jointed,” which enabled me to do the splits with total ease. My twin sister used to joke that I was more like rubber than flesh and bone! 

Well, I went through life pretty much a healthy and vigorous person, exercising quite a bit through my entire adult life. As a married woman with an only son, I could still do the splits with ease at age 42! I could bend, stretch and twist in any and every direction with absolute ease! If there were anyone who shouldn’t have expected to have joint problems, it would have been myself! In fact, I’d have given “joint problems’ as probably the last one on earth that would affect me. 

After my divorce when I was around 51, I began to experience a sharp pain in my left groin area, which became more and more acute and frequent as time went on. By the time I was 52, the pain had become really bad. It penetrated every aspect of my daily life and made it difficult for me to do the hard work of real estate sales. It hurt to walk, to sit, to lie down, and to even stand, at times. I had finally gone to my orthopedist and learned that I had this rare (only 1 in every 1,000 babies is born with it) condition and that I’d developed arthritis from it. I was given a prescription of Viol for relief. Well, I took the drug for about two weeks then stopped because not only did I not get any real relief, but I had read enough about these types of drugs to know that they actually can do more damage even while masking the pain of arthritis!