Still reeling from the events earlier in the week, we tried to rest on Sunday. Last Sunday, I spent most of it in a trauma room with my youngest daughter after she was hurt by a 10 year old boy.
I was enjoying a nap, when I heard commotion down stairs. "My husband can handle it." I told myself and attempted to roll back over and fall asleep again, but that is not how it goes in our house, so I dragged myself downstairs. What I see is my oldest daughter being carried into our living room. She is crying and everyone is upset. She is not moving her leg and I begin to try to figure out what is going on very quickly.
The story was, she was up at the park with a friend of mine. She was attempting to give our family a little relief by taking our kids to the park. Apparently, my oldest daughter was swinging on a swing and she heard and felt a pop. After that, she could not move her leg. It did not hurt much at first, but by the time they got her home, she was in anguish. We gave her some pain meds and I called our family doctor. This call can be tricky, as many of the doctors in this practice are squeamish about giving advice about handling the dislocations at home. Because we could not even get her to sit up, we could not get her in the car. How they got her home from the park, I will never know. The doctor wanted us to bring her to Children's hospital right away. The pain meds were not working and she could not work her hip back in herself, but we could not get her in the car. Our only option was another ambulance.
I felt sick. Not again! This has to be a bad dream! Off we go back down to Children's. After 7 hours, a lot of pain meds and x-rays the doctors came in with their findings. The radiologist thinks she has Idiopathic Chondrolysis. All of the doctors don't even know what it is. Finally they wake up an orthopedic doc and he said to send her home.
So we have a diagnosis that we know nothing about and we still cannot get her in the car because she will not bend at the hips. The ER doctors insist that the ortho come down and talk to us. The way he described it was that the cells that line her hip socket are breaking off and therefore the hip joint is not smooth. This causes pain in the joint, but they could not do anything but give her pain meds. It was better that she goes home to rest. I looked the doctor in the eye and asked, "Tell me how we are going to get her in and out of the car. Right now I am concerned with the next 5 minutes. Mobility is an issue and you have yet to address it." Honestly, I don't think that these doctors really think!
They gave her more pain meds and finally she started to move the hip joint. We got her in the car and home, finally. I tried to look this Idiopathic Chondrolysis up and there is not much information out there. I don't know for a fact that this condition is related to the EDS (Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome) but it is not a far jump to make. By the way, there is no treatment option for this condition, at least what I have found. Surgery, therapy drugs are all unsuccessful ways they have found to treat this condition.
Seriously, I cannot make this stuff up, even if I tried! Two years ago we were a "normal" family! What happened and when am I going to wake up?
