Spring Renewal!

I am just over 4.5 months post op on the right hip and I am happy to report that the catching is gone...that's correct, gone. Over the last month or so since I've posted, I've been doing my PT home exercises faithfully and I have been using my treadclimber 3-4 times a week after work for 20 minutes at a good hard pace. Well, about 2.5 weeks ago while I was on the treadclimber, my hip had that catching feeling (again) and I externally rotated it to see if I could unstick it and there was a pretty nasty pop and pain but after that the hip felt really good and has no longer been catching with any exercise or movement! In fact, all I really feel now is a chronic pulled muscle feeling along the side of my hip and in my butt. I am very happy with this! I *think* there was scar tissue that built up in the joint and I finally just unstuck the last of it. Let's hope that it's permanant.
I still occasionally get sore at work or have slight swelling. The trochanter is still painful when I lay down on my right side and I'm not sure it's going to get any better...we'll see. It almost feels like a deep ache that spreads from my trochanter throughout the rest of my thigh. Time to get a new mattress!

Well, here's the really interesting thing about my incision. The incision itself looks great. But  remember me mentioning there is a round pocket of swelling/squishiness near it at the bottom of it that has not changed since surgery? Well, a fellow hip chick had mentioned in her blog having the same issue and when she saw her OS for a follow up, he told her it was a fat hernia. I spoke with a general surgeon I work with today and showed her mine and she confirmed that mine is most likely a fat hernia as well and that a plastics consult would be the way to go if it bothers me. She also mentioned giving it a full year to let the "remodeling"/healing finish before taking any action against it. Now, I know you're all jealous about my herniated fat, but let me tell ya, it's not so cool walking around in a bikini with a fat hernia sticking out of your thigh....just sayin'.  Plastics consult, here I come! (I shall update on that when the time comes...however, it'll be awhile before I go down that road as I will probably wait until after the LPAO).

In other news, I am walking in a 5k in 2 weeks! I tried to train to run for the 5k, but the hip just wasn't quite ready to run and I'm not sure my left hip or my knees would do so well anyway. But I'm excited to say that I can walk that now without too much difficulty. Also, there is only 5 more weeks until my trip to Austria! I plan to do lots of walking then too, so this 5k will be just the beginning:) Spring has sprung here in Michigan (actually has been for the last month, totally unusual!) and I am looking forward to summer very much, which is a big change in heart from a month ago. I wasn't really sure how I felt about summer since my hip wasn't feeling the best, but now that I've turned a corner and seem to have made such major progress with it, I'm very excited for summer.