Patient Stories

Ollie

I was diagnosed with severe DDH (high dislocation), when I turned three years old. By this time I had been to the ER 8 times, I had been to my local doctors many times, I had many ultra sounds and I must of had at least 30 x-rays by this point.

It was only when my play group, my nursery teachers, my relatives (one of which is a nurse) and a family friend had written letters would my doctors take the fact that my walking was actually more like waddling and I put little pressure on my bad hip that I was refereed to a orthopedic specialist. A month later I saw him, he took one look at me and recommended an open Reduction, Pelvic Osteotomy, Femoral Shortening and Varus Osteotomy. A couple months later I had the surgery, as far as they thought it was a success.
((I actually remember waking up from this surgery, I couldn’t stop vomiting and I didn’t know where I was or who I was.)) I kept crying and screaming trying to rip the cast off; by this point they took me for an x-ray.

Little did we know a pin slipped out of place and the hip was very unstable so they removed the cast. A few days later I was back in the OR to have this placed again and another spica cast. This time it worked but my hip wasn’t healing as fast as it should have done and no one knew why and none of the tests they did with the cast on showed why, so they just monitored it and warned my dad that they may need to do another surgery. I’m kinda glad I didn’t need it in the end.

I was in a spica cast for 6-8 months, they took the pins and plated out of my hip and during the surgery my hip sublaxed so they fixed it and the cast went back on. I was almost 6 years old by the time my hip had healed. thankfully!

Now I am 17 years old. I have a check up for my hips every 6 months. Later on in life I am going to need a full on hip replacement and I have severe arthritis in my right hip.

I must say I am very grateful for my dad (as he was the only parent I had growing up) making me have the surgery I did and putting up with my constancy crying due to pain and ‘fragility’, also the time he took of work to take care of me. If he wasn’t so persistent, who knows if I would still be able to walk.