Walking in a winter wonderland?

So this last week has seen a significant proportion of the UK covered in a blanket of snow. To be fair, I think snow makes the landscape look fabulous, conjures up romantic images of snuggling down with a hot choc by a roaring fire and dreaming of the future. But the reality for someone who's mobility impaired, snow and ice are nothing short of a nightmare.

It affects you physically. My muscles have stiffened up so much as the temperatures have plummeted well below zero. This has caused a fair amount of pain in the hip by the end of the day and today I've been suffering a suspected trapped nerve of some sort probably due to tense muscles. It has eased off in the last hour after using my TENS but it was a real tear-jerking sharp pain every time I put weight through my right leg.

Probably my biggest problem is down to the over-exaggerated external rotation I have with my right leg. I have to be excessively careful on any slippy surface as my right foot naturally swivels outwards and if this movement occurs too fast, I pull a lot of muscles around the hip and groin. This has happened on an over-polished laminate floor once, imagine an icy surface! The pain that accompanies this jerked movement is indescribable. I can only liken it to someone trying to dislocate my hip with a sharp pull of my foot and failing. And that pain lasts days. It can be incapacitating.

So any pain induced due by slipping in the bad weather starts to affect you psychologically. You start to display avoidance behaviour as you don't want to go out where there's a potential chance of slipping or falling (even if its a light frost). Your social life might start to suffer as you try to minimise any trip you must make that involves going outside. You then start to compulsively worry - it starts off as worrying about slipping and falling, and then escalates as you do begin to avoid going outside to worrying about getting food and other essentials into your home.

It turns into quite an exhaustive cycle. You slip or fall on the snow or ice, you are now in pain, you avoid going out until absolutely necessary, your muscles are tense and stiffen up, thus more likely to slip or fall and the cycle begins again.

I'm constantly amazed at people who seemingly just stride across large patches of thick sheet ice and they stay upright! I shuffle, stop, shuffle, slip, stop, calm down, shuffle shuffle......and eventually get to my destination, hopefully without falling, and by that point both my legs are aching and exhausted! That eventually leads to hip pain later in the day, so I don't even have to slip for this weather to cause me pain! Can't win eh?!

Only 2-3 more months of this, bring on spring time!! Merry christmas :o)

Hip block booked

So I have the date for my hip block. Travelling to Birmingham for my appointment on Monday 18th January. As they want me in for 7.30am and I live two hours away, they've said I can come down the night before and stay at 'Hotel NHS'. Kinda sucks as no one really wants to spend an unnecessary night in hospital if they don't have to. At least then my 'hospital buddy' (aka my mum) doesn't have to get up at the crack of dawn to come with me, they get to actually have breakfast - whilst I have to fast from midnight! - and potter down to meet me to make sure I get home safely.

Hopefully I'll be able to reduce the amount of pain meds after the block. Which means my stomach won't take such a hammering and I'll be able to have a drink (I discovered that me, dicloflex and alcohol don't really mix on friday night!).

Can't wait to get my actual surgery date now. They said I won't get confirmation until about 6 weeks before. Mmm.... Might be phoning early as the secretary always seems to know well before 6 weeks :o)

UPDATE:
I was curious as to why I was being starved for this procedure as its normally done under local anaesthesia (like being at the dentist). Turns out they are putting me under general anaesthesia for 10mins or so to do it. Mr.Orthopod's secretary couldn't tell me why, but I'll find out soon enough! It may be due to the lack of synovial space, or it may just be easier and quicker for them?? Watch this space. I'm not adverse to the GA for 10mins, I've had it before when they did a manipulation under GA to assess range of motion. Oh, I feel like an old hand at this! *sigh*

I love my TENS!

Well, I'm impressed, it's doing it for me! Been slapping it on for half hour to an hour every evening (or so) and I've noticed a few things. I'm sleeping better, the muscles are less tired and I'm getting less referred pain down my leg (not completely eliminated, but significantly so). But the biggest thing for me has to be that I seem to have regained more of my range of motion in the hip. For a while now when the pain was bad I wasn't completely extending my hip back in walking stance - I was getting a stabbing pain and grating sensation when doing so. The days after using the TENS I've been able to extend my leg almost normally, certainly without pain and with less grating.

I'm very happy with this as it means I can keep my muscles functioning as close to normal as possible. As my surgery is at least 4 months away, I've been worried about muscle wasting as this will seriously hamper the recovery time after surgery. If I can keep doing the physio exercises and walking as normal as possible, this means I'm already helping myself massively.

Right, time for my evening zap!

TENS

So tonight I tried out a TENS unit (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulator). At first glance the unit is a lot smaller than I thought, and as it has a slider mechanism it looks like an oversized mobile phone. The electrodes are really easy to place and its very easy to just plug-n-go. I placed the electrodes as suggested for hip pain in the booklet, one over the greater trochanter region and one down on the side of the buttock. Pick a programme and go!

Well, it goes and you slowly increase the intensity of the pulse - otherwise it would be a bit of a shock! I found it seriously tickly for the first 5 minutes, but that subsided. I tried out a few of the different programmes and quite liked the sensation of increasing waves of intensity, this setting actually soothed away some of the muscle ache I'd been having all day in the glutes. So first try and I like it.

I wouldn't swap it for the analgesics but as I still get breakthrough pain with the painkillers anyways I thought it was worth a go to ease the extra aches and pains. I need to play around and customise the settings for me, along with better placement of the electrodes. But I like it, lets see what its like after a week.