At the doctor's office

Well, I went to the doctor about my hip. Here’s how it went down.

He came in to the exam room. He introduced himself. For our purposes today, we’ll call him Dr. Bigdy. Then he asked me how I had injured my hip.

I launched into the story. He wanted me to show him the yoga position I was in when I hurt myself. I sat on the floor and leaned over, demonstrating. He asked me a lot of questions, about where it hurt then, what I did about it. About how it hurts now.

I explained a lot. It hurt here when I injured it. Then I sort of stopped doing yoga and stopped exercising at all for a while. I explained that at first when I started exercising again, first started running, it hadn’t really bothered me. Then after a while, it started to bother me in different ways—in hurt in different places. I talked about that. Then I talked about how it hurts now, how it’s gotten worse.

He listened. He interjected with questions and listened some more.

This was good.

He asked me to sit up on the edge of the exam table.

He stood right in front of me and tapped my left leg. “Lift your knee up.” I did so. Dr. Bigdy placed both his hands just above it. “Resist. Try to keep your knee up.” Then he pushed down on my leg. I tried to hold my knee up. I couldn’t. In just a moment it was resting on the table again next to my other leg.

Next he stepped half a step to the side and we repeated this on my right side. He was not able to push my right leg down. I could resist all his pressure. Aha, he said. “See that? You have weakness on your injured side.”

I asked why. He explained that since I injured it, I can’t use it the same as I did before. I questioned further: I feel like I’m using it the same, I said. I don’t understand why it would be so much weaker.

“Do you want me to do it again? It’s not a party trick. This side is clearly weaker.”

I indicated that I believe him, but didn’t understand why. I tried to ask if the injury could have been related to the stretching of ligaments during pregnancy and the slow re-settling of my hips after giving birth. He corrected me: your ligaments don’t stretch during pregnancy. I got flustered and backed off, not knowing how to ask my question now.

He wanted an x-ray. He left the room, indicating that someone would be in to take me for the x-ray.

When the x-ray was done and Dr. Bigdy and I were both in the room again, he pulled the x-ray image up on his computer screen.

Let me just pause here for a second and tell you that this is the second time in my life that this part of my body has been x-rayed. I felt, there in Dr. Bidgy’s office, the same feeling I felt about 14 years ago when I first saw an x-ray image of my pelvis. Exposed. I suppose that is the purpose of an x-ray: to expose the bones so that we may examine them. But I honestly feel vulnerable when a relative stranger is staring at an (radiographic) image of my pelvic region.

Anyway, probably to cope with my slight discomfort in that moment, I tried to crack a little joke about my pelvis. “The last time I had an x-ray of this region, the doctor said . . . “ The joke didn’t work. I don’t remember exactly what I said, and I don’t remember exactly what he said in response, but I know his response included the words, “Orthopedists don’t care about that.”

Right.

He showed me my joint, pointed out the ways in which it looks good and is not damaged or injured. He showed me a spot higher up—what you or I might call the hip bone—that looked like it had something fuzzy on it. He said that was calcium buildup from inflammation (?) and that this was likely causing some of my pain.

He walked about that for a moment, then he stood and walked across the room and sat in a chair facing me.

“Well, as I see it, we can treat this in one of two ways. We can treat you as if you are an athlete—which is what you are—and you’re going to push yourself hard and train for races and run and train and stay in excellent condition. OR, we can treat you like you’re a middle aged woman and you’re gonna be a little bit active sometimes.”

Then he launched into the two treatment options, one of which he obviously preferred but felt that he had to defend it vigorously despite the fact that he had not paused at all for me to speak. I hadn’t so much as give him a look. He just was defensive about it. He wanted to re-emphasize and explain why what he recommended was important, good, the best way, and so on.

I won’t go into more detail. He talked for about ten more minutes. No exaggeration. But when someone is defensive like that, I tend to wonder why.

And when someone calls me a middle aged woman to try to increase the likelihood of my agreeing to the thing that he was defensive about, I tend to recoil in shock and horror. Ok, not really. But no matter how routine and ordinary the recommended treatment plan was, his behavior made me think twice about it. And by “think twice” I really mean “agonize about it for several days.” You know me.

Thanks Dr. Bigdy!