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Sunday, May 2, 2010

Two Doctors

I sent my one and only set of hip xrays off to Dr. Philippon and then got some advice from others to check out other doctors. This is great advice, but now I am scheduled to get another set of hip xrays tomorrow. I am going to back up a bit in my week. I struggled immensely through this week. On Tuesday night, I started finding more blogs about Dr. Philippon. I found Nicoll Blevins' blog (linked on the left) and started reading rapidly. I read that it took her 6 months to get in for surgery with Dr. Philippon. I cried and cried, and then decided to try and get in touch with her to find out the details of her situation. Within 15 minutes, we were talking on the phone. She verified her 6 month wait time. As much as I would like to go see Dr. Philippon, I am a teacher, and my students are among top priority. If you do the math, 6 months puts me in the middle of fall, right when I am teaching again. If I wait until December to do it over Christmas break, I will come back to work while trying to manage hours of physical therapy in January, during a 5th grader's most important time of the year: CSAP preparation. Since my district is also the one of first pay for performance districts in the country, my pay is directly connected to how well my students do on CSAP; therefore, for my students and for my pay, I am fearful of scheduling my surgery during an academic school year.

Every morning I talk with a friend on the way into work. We are very close and she has had many surgeries on her foot. She suggested I look into the other doctors that were recommended to me. She said, "If they have a wait time, then you know, you have done everything." So I quickly called Dr. Byrd in Tennessee. Within 30 minutes, I had spoken with 2 people from his office, YES TWO, and one of them for an extensive amount of time. She answered all of my questions, and I felt more comfortable than I have in the last 6 weeks. Dr. Byrd is about 6 weeks out from when he receives your films, which will be this Tuesday, after I get my new hip xrays and they are overnighted. That will give me enough time to finish out my school year, go on a two week vacation, and get to Tennessee for surgery.

In the meantime, I emailed Meghan, Dr. Philippon's surgical coordinator, and she confirmed the wait time for Dr. Philippon, about 5 months once he decides to treat me. He is still in that deciding stage. I have kept the process going with him just in case I change my mind. He should have gotten my hip xrays late last week, and I assume I will hear from his office this week.

In requesting my arthrogram results to send to Dr. Byrd, I was able to look at the report: I have three tears. One they label as a "full-thickness" tear. They also say that one could be from degeneration. The forth diagnosis: Bone marrow edema in the femoral neck, my stress fracture.

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