Quote

"It is a scale of proportions which makes the bad difficult and the good easy." -Einstein

Injury and Addison's

After reading some comments here and on FaceBook, I realized that I was so obsessed with the injury itself that I forgot to mention some really important Addison's stuff.

• It's a hip injury, it's a stress fracture to the neck of the femur. It's in the femoral neck (see picture above)
• My awesome ortho made me feel quite confident that this is an OVERUSE injury as opposed to a "fragility issue". By "fragility issue", I believe he meant hormonal imbalance, osteoporosis, etc. I had a DEXA (bone density) scan three years ago and showed him the results which showed good bone density. He did recommend a follow up DEXA scan. My GP tried to get me to have one this last fall but I declined...(cause I'm noncompliant!)
• This is a common endurance athlete injury. This stress fracture of the femoral neck is most likely not from too many steroids. Many "normal" endurance runners get this injury. (free membership is needed to access this medscape.com article if you're interested in reading it)
• I have kept my Hydrocortisone the same, 25 mg per day, despite not exercising at all for the last six weeks. The first five weeks I was wrestling with some intense pain, working despite the pain and thyroid problems and I think my steroids were being depleted. I was exhausted. The last week has been full of adjustments like walking around on crutches which is exhausting and taxing to my upper body. I'm still really tired and wanting to go to bed around 5 pm. I don't get in bed until 7 or 8 but I'm wanting to hit the hay around 5.
• I've even upped my hydrocortisone by 5 to 10 mg when I've been nauseous and cold. Nausea and bone chilling cold are symptoms of low cortisol for me and are usually resolved with 5 or 10 mg of hydrocortisone.
• I will lower my hydrocortisone when I start falling asleep and waking up at a normal time and when I get my appetite back.
• I've lowered my florinef from .075 to .025 mcg and reduced my salt consumption. My blood pressure has been high 150/80 for the last month. I think the lack of exercise has reduced my need for florinef and salt. Too bad cause I like the salt and miss it.
• For those of you who know me or feel like you do, I am really being compliant. I am staying off my leg as much as possible. Of course I'm unable and unwilling to be too sedate so I'm hobbling around on the crutches and getting really sore. My son and husband will be helping me at work. My husband has been picking up a lot of slack for me for weeks now. He's starting to cook! Yay!!

Thanks to everyone for the kind words and prayers. Thanks also to those of you who have offered to hang out with me and watch movies or play games or go to the bar. I really appreciate it!!!

New life for a while

Above is an Xray of my hip. The break is the horizontal yellow line, the new bone growth is the vertical yellow line.

Yes, I'm a dork, took pictures of my Xrays and MRI. Dr. Brown humored me and drew the lines on the Xray above for a second time just so I could take a picture of it!

I saw my awesome Ortho yesterday. Prognosis for a full recovery is excellent. Getting to the full recovery...ridiculously slow. 6 weeks on 2 crutches! For right now, no weight on the right leg, no swimming, no cycling with the bad leg (I CAN sit on the trainer and spin with the good leg, bad leg on stool), I can lift upper body. Anything that hurts, I can't do.

POSITIVES of this experience:

• Sleeping more
• Reading more, finished first two Twilight books
• Bubble baths
• I'm decorating my crutches and will post pictures when I get more flair. I just watched Office Space and realized I need 15 pieces of flair. I've got 3, I'm working on the other 12
• I will catch up on my emails
• I can be lazy!!!
• Between the MRI and the Xrays, I get to see some really cool views of my insides

NEGATIVES of this experience:

• I've never had to take my pants off for so many people, it gets old after a while
• My armpits hurt from the crutches
• Six weeks on crutches!
• I can't put ANY weight on my right leg
• I'm tired!

This experience is certainly an opportunity for me to learn a lot. It's an interesting experience to go from being able to do nearly anything I want to do physically to spilling coffee all over the floor trying to get it to the opposite counter. I'm wearing a backpack everywhere since I can't carry much in my hands. At the stores, I've had to ride around in the electric cart. Because I'm so spastic, I knocked over a dog treat display in KMart. Kind of funny but a little embarrassing.

Mentally, this is a very sobering experience. My entire view of myself, my interests and my day to day life have to be changed radically. I'm going to try to set some new goals for 2010 and I will post them here.