Where'd 2019 go ?

It hasn't been a year yet. So that means my blog is not dead. Yet.

It's been a long few months full of navigating the CPAM, French health care and learning a lot about physical therapy.

I started 2019 laid up with a new hip (resurfacing actually). When I was 12, I got hit by a car. At the time, I remember a doctor saying to me "one day you'll have arthritis." As a 12 year old, "one day" means when you're really old...not 35 when my pain actually started. I was always athletic, started running track and field in high school, I ran cross country at college. And after college, running  was my solace. I ran a marathon, a dozen half marathons, running through two pregnancies...and then I started getting odd pains. I was in and out of physical therapy for years with various back and knee pains. But as they came and went, my mind kept going back to that doctor in 1987.

So in fall 2017, after various stints of not running, cutting back on activity, and constant low grade pain, I took matters into my own hands and went to see a rheumatologist. He sent me for a scan, confirmed I had some arthritis but that we could do cortisone injections and I'd be fine. He also said to stop running. After crying a little, he said well I could run if I could get through the pain.

The scan showed a more severe amount of damage to my hip than they suspected. I had a torn labrum, osteoarthritis and  a torn ligament. The cortisone injection was a flop because it made me feel WORSE. I went back to the rheumatologist, who by this point started understanding that  I wasn't just giving up. He sent me for 2 more injections neither of which had much benefit. By this point, there were days when I couldn't put on my own shoes, I was walking with a visible limp and the pain was waking me at night.

Before evening waiting for results for the second scan, I had an appointment with the hip surgeon. When I saw him in July 2018, I hadn't run in 7 months and couldn't walk for more than a few feet before my hip started to seize. He told me I was too  young for a total hip replacement and that I was too small for resurfacing. Due to a crazy law in France, resurfacing is only from a certain femur size in order to prevent inexperienced surgeons from doing the operation.

By now it was summer vacation and I had accepted that I would maybe never run again. But it was ok if I could still go for long power walks. One day, I came in from a 5k walk in the woods limping like never before. that's when my hip starting "sticking". I spent the next 3 weeks of vacation in excruciating pain. My husband was washing my feet. I couldn't sit cause my hip would stick. I couldn't stand because it hurt. And I couldn't sleep.

When I got home, I said that's it. I've lived a month in excruciating pain and I'm not doing this anymore. One sleepless night, I contacted a surgeon over the border in Belgium about hip resurfacing. Rereading that first email still makes me cry. Long story short, he confirmed I was the perfect candidate, the hip surgeon in France told me that going to Belgium for surgery was the best option for me, and so in November 2019 I was the owner of a newly resurfaced hip.

I've spent the last year learning to walk and run again (more about that running thing later). But mostly, fighting social security so they would pay for my surgery.

The biggest lesson I've learned this past year is about advocacy. If you do not advocate for yourself in France, and probably anywhere, no one else will. But what about the people who don't have the tools or the knowledge or the confidence to advocate for themselves? What do they do ?

So in this time of Thanksgiving, I have a whole bunch of people to thank starting with my friend Sean who first told me about resurfacing, my kids and husband for supporting me through all this , the surgeon at CHR (Prof. Migaud) for being honest with me, and also netflix for keeping me entertained during some very long days and nights....

Ideas for future blog posts :

1. how to deal with the CPAM
2. a brief lesson on resurfacing 
3. learning to run again 
4. and of course my kids and their little bilingual minds !