Developmental dysplasia of the hip. Gosh how I hate that phrase, it rips into my heart and hurts. I have had enough of it. Yet my little girl is still in it’s clutches still getting pain after hip dysplasia.
Three nights this week she has cried out with leg pain. Three times I have climbed into her bed in the small of the night to hold her. To rub those aching limbs, to soothe her and tell her it will be ok. The literature says hip dysplasia doesn’t hurt at her age. I beg to differ. Why did she never weight bear – was it due only to hypermobility? A condition that has only been diagnosed since her hip dysplasia was. Why did she refuse to walk for so long?
I took her to the doctors two weeks ago concerned about her pain and her ankles. Those ankles that roll beneath her. Those ankles that cause her to fall, to sting and bruise her legs. The legs that are always littered with bruises. She has a diagnosis of hypermobility syndrome too. We have seen rheumatologists, orthopedics and registrars.
They say her hip is in place but now her foot is intoeing too much. She also has metatarsus abductus which is another packaging deformity- what a nice description for a child yet one that makes me feel guilty for how I grew and nurtured her. However, both feet are intoeing too much. It could be a sign of femoral anteversion something that has always concerned me as she didn’t have a femoral rotation in the hope it would rectify itself. I’m feeling anxious and scared again. I look at her feet and know it’s not normal. It breaks me a little that we are not sticking to fingers up at ddh just yet.
I don’t know what the future holds.
She is due X-rays in July. I think I may bring them forward, I think we need to speak with her surgeon. She has been referred to physios. Physio’s let us down before not spotting a dislocated hip.
I wanted Erin to start school in Sept on an equal footing. Her feet are anything but equal to her friends. I want ddh and all its associated issues to do one. Erin was late diagnosed and from that first day of diagnosis when I slid down a wall in tears I knew the road was long and lonely.
