What is AVN? Well it’s not something I had ever heard of until I had it. Avascular Necrosis is basically the death of your bone tissue because there’s little to no blood flowing through it. Blood revitalizes your bones and gives them what they need to thrive. You have no blood supply? Then the bone tissue becomes brittle and weak and essentially “dies”. How did this happen to me? The most common culprit is Prednisone. Over 25 years of having it in my system caused my most used joints to become basically dead and the joints wore out to the point I couldn’t use them.
Many people have had AVN. It’s the sole reason for at least 10% of all hip replacements. Even some big names in History have dealt with AVN like NFL players Bo Jackson and Brett Farve. Both rock artists Eddie Van Halen and Tom Petty had AVN and sadly it was over medication from this condition that led to Tom Petty’s death. There’s several factors from age to medication to drinking habits. Mine was most certainly caused from taking Prednisone for so many years. Most people aren’t put on a long term regiment on that medication until they’re older, so by the time they’ve had it for 25 years it’s harder to determine if it was purely the medication or simply old age and other factors that would lead to AVN developing. I was put on prednisone straight away as a baby with my first kidney transplant so my current age is how long Ive been on it. Drinking excessively can also cause AVN. This was the case with Eddie Van Halen. Over time heavy drinking can narrow your arteries and blood vessels and that can help add to AVN problems.
I started having symptoms of it during the summer of 2016. This was only 3 months following my final chemo treatment for Lymphoma. I had gotten through that trial in my life and things were again slowly looking better and better and I was feeling much better. My mother has 2 horses that I regularly feed, not any hard work really, just lifting feed and hay and tending to them. I was out for my routine of feeding them for the day when the right side of my hip had a small pop feeling in it. Just like any other time when you pop your knuckles or something I didn’t think anything of it. As the afternoon went on I felt the right side of my hip hurting. I thought to myself eh, maybe I was too rough and just tweaked something. Then as time went on it got worse. It just kept getting more and more sore to the point that the space between my right leg and groin felt like I had a knife stabbed in me and that knife would metaphorically twist everytime I took a step. It got so painful I started even walking differently. I had a limp and didn’t want to walk normally with that right leg. After a couple months of putting it off and realizing something else now was happening I decided to see my Rheumatologist. They took some Xrays of my hip and that’s where I first learned of AVN. He said he thought it was most likely that looking at the Xrays and based of my description of the pain. He referred me to a Orthopedic surgeon.
By this point it was December of 2016. I saw Dr Omar Akhtar who wasn’t a whole lot older than myself. He was one of the best Dr’s I had ever had. He not only wanted to tell me what I needed to do but he wanted to make sure I fully understood what was happening with me and what he wanted to do. He had me do some scans and Xrays. He told me that I did indeed have full blown Avascular Necrosis in my right femoral head of my hip. I’d have to get a complete hip replacement for my right hip. I understood and went on with my day after that. I hit a deep depressive moment after that. I was growing tired of all this. I thought to myself, why this now? Was it not enough to go through an entire Kidney transplant and then Cancer just the next year? Now it was about to be a 3rd major medical issue in my life within 3 years. I inevitably had the thoughts of is this it? Is my body just going to start breaking down from 2015 on? I already had depression before and went through so much to come out of that pit and here I was again, facing a major medical situation. I prayed a lot. Prayed for strength and patience to get through all this. I thought to myself, a person can only take so much, where does this end? I eventually pulled myself out of it and told myself well, it’s just another brick in the wall. Another hurdle that I know I can do. It was just nerve wrecking to think about it all. I had a lot on my plate and just held on with my friends and family supporting me.
The surgery was set for February 18th 2017. I had to prep myself for this in particular just because I was nervous about walking again. One interesting thing about my hip replacement compared to most others was that I got a ceramic femoral head for my hip replacement. They’ve almost all been made of steel since they started. But Dr Akhtar told me about how many who get the steel have to end up getting it re replaced after about 35 years because of how everything settles and grows in there. But they had newer technology and in some cases where the person is young like myself they started using ceramic. He said the hope is that ceramic will last longer and I won’t have to come back for a second procedure on that hip down the road. So I’m a trendsetter I guess you can say in a few ways haha. I went up to the Austin Diagnostic Clinic early that morning. Met up with my grandparents and went back for prep. I remember being extra nervous for that surgery just because of everything that was involved in it. The next thing I remembered was waking up about 8 hours later in a hospital room. My mom and Erica were there to help me feel better but I was still pretty loopy from the medication. They tried to do a spinal injection at the beginning of the surgery and kept messing up. I can remember them trying to do that a few times but I was so zonked out I couldn’t really feel anything besides a pin prick and pressure. So I spent the rest of that night with absolutely no pain and was pretty out of it.
The next morning was go time. I had to stand up and take steps with a walker less that 24 hours after the surgery. It was scary at first. I had to trust my body and trust that I wouldn’t fall down in pain. Slowly but surely I got around and was moving. I went home that afternoon and got started on recovery. Lots of rest and exercise. I had to do exercises each day and move around and build my strength back. I was determined and kept at it, some days being more painful than others but I kept going. I was set to get back to normal, to that same place I had been striving to get to ever since my kidney rejected. I had a goal and that was for everything to go back to my sense of normal at least. The biggest relief after a week of moving around finally was that the pain was gone. Just completely gone, I could walk like normal again and had a much better quality of life back. I used that feeling to push myself to keep up the good work until that hip was fully recovered. I’d say the longest part of healing was being able to stand on that leg without it hurting from putting too much weight on it. But other than that I was fully recovered even to my surprise in only 2 to 3 months. A big part of that being my age but I was blown away at just how well it came out. It’s been almost 4 years now as I write this and my hip still feels amazing. It’s an adjustment getting used to setting metal detectors off and feeling that ceramic through my skin. But I’m just glad and thankful I got through yet another hurdle in life. It seemed endless for awhile there but I enjoyed a good period of good health after that. I had no additional issues until late 2018 where I had yet another AVN battle to get through. Except this next one would be so much harder and more of a challenge than the hip replacement.