Patient Stories
Emily
Hi guys, I’m Emily and I would like to share my story with hip dysplasia.
I was diagnosed in the first week of august 2015 when I was 12 years old. I have hip dysplasia in both sides of my hip. When i was diagnosed it was the day before we moved to the UK so I couldn’t start treatment in my old town. when we had a short interview with the school deputy headteacher my parents told them about my resent diagnosis and gave them a document from the doctor that diagnosed me that I couldn’t do high impact sports for a year. My PE teachers didn’t seem to care about it and they still don’t but i’ll get back to that later.
During that year my PE teacher didn’t like the fact I wasn’t participating in lessons fully and the next school year when I had the same teacher again they congratulated me on joining in more which I realize was fairly rude of them as I can’t do anything about what a doctor told me NOT to do.
The next few years of school even in present time is a roller coaster of getting annoyed at PE teachers and the entire school because unless you have a note, a visible disability or have learning difficulties the school doesn’t care if you can’t do something and expects you to things that on a bad pain day you just can’t be asked to do it, but PE in my school is the absolute worst.
Last week I had PE as my lesson and we were playing badminton which as I believe most of you know is a impact sport and when I sat down to rest my hip after it started to hurt, they made me get back up and wouldn’t let me sit back down again. This week my hip is feeling the consequences of my PE teachers and because I’m 15 now i just make fun of them for being so ignorant about things like this even though the school knows about it and I have told them about my diagnosis but the only thing they can say is ” Emily, you better get that checked out”, and I’m all like well nah its not like I haven’t told you twice this month that there is something not right with my hip.
Now back to the school, sometimes I have lessons on the first floor to then go up to the 3rd floor to then almost get trampled going to the ground floor for lunch to then have last lesson on the 3rd floor again. The thing is the school has lifts for people who have difficulty getting up the stairs which is all well and nice however 80% of the time that’s me and I’m not allowed to use them because like before I don’t have a note or I don’t have a visible disability, almost like INVISIBLE DISABILITIES never existed and that annoys me the most, the school is like if you can get to school without crutches or have a note you can go up and down three flights of stairs all day long.
In my old school you would be the friends of either the dinner lady or the PE teachers because to get to all other places you needed to climb stairs, even to get to the first aid room and that school was amazing, the school I’m in now if you haven’t seen it yet not so much.
Now no more school talk. My mom has Hip dysplasia too, and the obvious stuff she tells me when I tell her that my hips are hurting is the same no matter how much you tell her, mainly the stuff she was told by a DIFFERENT doctor. She says things like “lose weight and that will help” and I’m like “I know mom but if that was so easy you would be thin too wouldn’t you” not like that’s annoying at all she also says “you need to walk more” I have actually said this “My school is a literal treadmill”.
I will update you guys if you want that is if things change or I just want to rant about how the school is most likely not going to change when we get a new headteacher in January and when I go into 6th Form.