Patience

This week I finally got round to getting my hip fixed, for the past year I have been experiencing a fair amount of pain in right leg, initially we thought it was my knee, however it turned out to be the hip.

With a lovely full anterior tear in the labrum, not sure what that is, well it’s the lovely cushiony bit that surrounds the joint.

With this tear it also means the bone starts to grind on bone and we get bone deformities and arthritis build up.

Knowing this, I was originally going to get this done at the end of June but for one reason or another it didn’t happen and got pushed back to this week.

I pushed back all races and competing until next year (well not all, I still did the ones before June) because you know it’s all about management.

I know that it would play up for 24 hrs after training hard or racing and I would hobble about a bit.

This was manageable so kept it up, knowing that once they went in, fixed the tear, cleaned it all up, reshaped the bone then to get back out on the courses would be 6 months, I knew in my head that this was ideally the perfect time to do it.

Rehab during the winter and back out on the courses in May next year, aiming for a big year of racing and challenges before I hit 50.

I know I may only have a couple more years of OCR at age level because the body is telling me that it may be time to drop it back down for fun.

However, I have unfinished business out there and don’t want to give it up just yet.

So, I went under the knife this week, and so after showing the physio what I was able to do we were signed of to go home the same day.

However, we had to wait for the surgeon.

He turned up after finishing fixing people with some good news and some bad news for us.

The good news was, he went in tidied it up, reshaped the bone and all that.

The bad news was he couldn’t fix the tear, when he went in, he found I had done a lot of damage to one of the ligaments, the hips equivalent of the ACL which is used to stabilise the hip, so even if he did fix the tear it wouldn’t of worked because of that.

So, not totally fixed.

At that point in my head, I did what we all do, we go the worst case scenario.

Fucks sake, we are going to have to do this again, we are going to have to go through this again and this is just going to push everything back even more.

The Surgeons words were, now the next step really comes down to what you want to be able to get back to doing.

So as far as I see it we have 3 options

Option 1) This works as it is and I just decide to step back and focus on other things knowing that the issue is always there.

Option2) They go in fix the ligament and the tear in the hope that this pushes back the replacement for a while. I can then rehab and potentially get back to competing.

Option 3) I go part terminator and they replace it all, rehab and potentially get back to competing.

We find out in 6 weeks’ time when I go back for my follow up.

In the meantime, my headspace has been up and down, what do I want to do, do I want to compete, do I want to step back, what do I want to do.

But realistically, this is all just stuff going on in my head and I’m currently worrying about stuff that hasn’t even happened yet.

The one thing I do know is that, currently I need to have patience with this rehab (currently going better than expected, going into these things strong and fit certainly helps coming out the other side), and then see what those options are and if it means things are pushed back a couple of more months then so be it.

I have a choice, I let this get on top of me and let this take over and drive me into a dark place or I just get on with shit, focus on those bits I can control, the rehab on this op, my strength work on the bits I can do, in case I do back under the knife again my recovery will be just as strong.

Sometimes in life we have these moments that make us step back and go for fucks sake and yes we can and should allow ourselves to be angry, worried about it all for a bit, but after that it’s time to put it aside and just get on with being the best you can be in the situation you are in.

Sometimes, the only thing you have is patience.