I celebrated silently, alone as I slipped my socks on while standing up without the aid of a chair. I looked up and around at the posters which brought life around my room; “Get well soon, Erika! You got this,” and smiled solemnly as I took in the worn inked-in letters. Relearning to walk for the third year in a row has become tiring, and little triumphs like these brought me a mixture of hope and sadness for myself throughout each year. Each year has brought a new chapter, a new journey. A complicated, difficult, but so greatly fulfilling journey that’s taken me years of reflection to learn how to love it.
My name is Erika. I am a current high school junior based in the Bay Area. And this is the story of my ongoing mental and physical battle with hip dysplasia.
Since I was little, I’ve always experienced a sort of dullness in my right hip. I remember describing it to my family and friends as “that feeling you get when you’ve been walking around the mall for a long time,” and I would usually get a hum of understanding in response. Therefore, up until I was 13, I thought this sort of pain was normal. I stayed extremely active doing various sports, including Jiu-Jitsu for around five years. When Covid-19 hit, I had to put this on pause and, instead, started running and working out every day in our garage.
It was during these sessions that the dull pain started to become louder and sharper. I would be running on the treadmill and suddenly trip due to a pop in my hip. I would be doing mat exercises and hear my right hip grind and snap. It felt like I was shutting down along with the rest of the world during Covid. I often looked at my brother running an easy two miles, while I was yelping in pain on the first, and wondered why I couldn’t perform. This continued for around two months before we finally decided to get my hip checked. Eventually we landed in a hospital in Oakland where it was concluded that I had severe bilateral hip dysplasia.
The pain I was feeling was due to my right hip grinding and popping in and out of my pelvic bone which, essentially, was too shallow to securely hold either of my hips in place. After my diagnosis I stopped all impact activity, limited the amount of weight I would carry, and how long I would go on walks. I began feeling trapped in my diagnosis, like I was forced to stay stagnant as life moved on around me. This feeling only grew during the process of my first surgery in 2020 in the middle of my freshman year of high school. I had a periacetabular osteotomy (PAO) on my right hip first since it was more severe than my left at the time. I was out of school for six weeks and I went back the week before midterms.
Physically, I was making a strong recovery. The only difficult part was the fact that I now had to rely on my left hip to move, causing it to slowly worsen. Of course, this was expected, and it just forced me to stay less mobile. Mentally however, I felt as if I was slowly losing grip on myself as I watched different opportunities slip away from me. Moments like driving away as I watched the rest of my friends walk around town, missing out on internships due to my physical disabilities, and regularly missing school for physical therapy and doctors’ appointments built up mental blocks that forced me into a difficult corner of my brain.
A year after my first PAO I went into surgery for my left hip during the middle of sophomore year. Again, I was pulled from school for six weeks and went back during midterms. During both of my academic leaves I poured all of my effort into school; I saw my grades as the only thing I had going for me since I was heavily lacking in extracurriculars. Even when I passed all my midterms, I still felt a lack of accomplishment as the year went on and as I was in and out of class for recovery. To compensate, I pushed my body to try and get myself back to what my lifestyle used to be. By seven months post-op, I was back to running, weightlifting, and could freely walk around town with my friends. I was able to travel over the summer, and I started to feel like I was gaining control of my life again.
But eight months post-op, during the summer of 2023, I found out a screw in my left hip had broken. The cause of the break was unclear, but it was causing me immense pain. I had to go back into surgery for a revision at the beginning of my junior year. It felt like I was being pushed back to square one. Thankfully, with the support of my amazing teachers and medical team, I went back to self-studying for the third time and was able to make a smooth transition back to school after just three weeks.
This brings us to the present day. While I still can’t do any impact activities, my physical and mental health are the strongest they have been in almost four years. My journey still is not over. But reflecting back at where I’ve been, I feel it is important to recognize the obstacles myself and others with similar struggles have to overcome to get to a point of acceptance with their hip dysplasia. Moments of anger when your body physically cannot do what you want it to do, and moments of loneliness when you look around and see everyone take on the world without having to hold onto crutches or a wheelchair, often go unnoticed when talking about this condition.
The taxations taken on your mental state are just as debilitating as your physical state when it comes to dysplasia, which is a topic I feel should be openly spoken about more. The International Hip Dysplasia Institute (IHDI) opens a door for other patients to share their stories, to be heard and to be given a space where they can find community in their struggles. A donation to this institute would help these voices be heard and bring more awareness to the topic of hip dysplasia as a whole.
You being here, and taking the time to read my story, alone, already does a part in shedding light and bringing representation to these topics. For that, I thank you. Your presence means the world to me 🙂
Please consider donating to the International Hip Dysplasia Institute to support their advocacy, research, education, and technological initiatives to improve the outcomes for individuals with hip dysplasia.
