Take a chance on me

Will you take a chance on me?

If you had the ability, the skill and the tools to help someone in need, would you?

How far would you let someone deteriorate before intervening?

If there was the smallest possibility of changing someone’s life for the better, would you do it?

These are all questions I want answered. You see, I recently got my results back from a recent MRI and CT scan of my left hip, and the findings were not great. Multiple cysts, bone growth on the head of the femur, irregularities within the acetabulum and fraying of the labrum. To simplify, most are de-generative changes which is accelerating the arthritis in my left hip joint. I was only diagnosed with very early arthritic changes back in February ’10, where previously there was none.

I have been in severe pain for many months now, and most doctors attribute it to chronic pain. If you have read my previous blog posts and know my previous history, you know I have been through quite a lot and have had many surgeries for problems within the left hip cavity. At this point in time, and for quite a few months now, I have been unable to get out of this acute pain and its levels of 7 and above out of 10 on a basic pain scale. Before each surgery I have had, multiple scans have shown a proper cause for the pain I'm experiencing within my left hip. Once again scans have given a decent cause for the acute pain I am in. I feel like I am suffering from ‘Chronic Acute Pain’ because over the course of 4 years now, pain has subsided after surgery, and yet when something goes wrong once more, scans prove there is a cause of some sort and surgery has fixed it. Now the problem is; and this is where the chronic pain part comes in, is because of all the doctors and nurses I have seen, they have taken quite a long time to reach the point of operating, and the pain continues up to this point and becomes quite severe however always subsides afterwards. Now this is where my questions start to come in.

I have recently seen a new orthopaedic surgeon, who after consultation, and reading the results of my latest scans seems hesitant to help, in case he makes the pain worse. This is a similar situation I had with my previous surgeon.

This is a risk I am willing to take. Is he?

If you had the ability, the skill and the tools to help someone in need, would you?

How far will you let me deteriorate before intervening?

If there was the smallest possibility of changing someone’s life for the better, would you do it?

Even though I am no more qualified then the person next to me in the field of medicine and how you operate, if you see a patient in severe pain, and there is obvious arthritic changes within the structure of the joint and you know it will only continue to get worse, wouldn’t it be easier and more helpful to the patient (me) to intervene those changes now and take that risk that you may actually help that patient, even if it’s the smallest percentage, to give them a better quality of life than they had before?

I have continued to hear that my age is a problem in regard to a hip replacement, well so is my quality of life. I have none. If you can help, you may actually be able to give me back some quality, so the rest of my body doesn’t deteriorate either. I see a number of specialists for problems that have occurred from a lack of a quality of life. My body is deteriorating because I can’t do the normal things that a 24 year old might do. I am living like an elderly person, relying on almost full time care from my 60 year old mother. I am filling my body with pain controlling medicines just to get through each day, which I barely do. I am slowly losing the confidence I once had to be a teacher. I know I would make a great teacher, my prac skills have shown so. I'm intelligent, smart, funny, kind, practical and fully aware that I will never return to being the person I once was, and be able to do the things I used to do. But please…

I beg of you, please take a chance on me.

what would you like to know?

I thought I'd write an off the cuff blog asking you guys what you'd like to know about me. I'm fairly honest in my blogs, and for those who follow but don't know me, I'd love to know what you'd like to ask.
please comment any questions and I'll create a blog answering them. I think this would be quite fun.
Thanks your time and effort is hugely appreciated :)

xx Jen

The pain of painkillers

I know it’s been months since I last posted anything, however I thought that I might just skip ahead of what’s happened over the last few months and discuss something that is in topic in my life now, and it’s quite a serious topic; Painkillers.

Disclaimer: ** Please take note that all medications should be taken seriously and under the advice your doctor. These views are my own and based on my personal experiences. The medications I am speaking about are addictive and should never be abused or taken without your doctor’s consent. **

At some stage in our lives, we’ve all taken a couple of panadol, maybe even some panadine (panadol + codeine), to get us over that cold, or headache. Some of us have even taken much stronger pain medications that have been prescribed by our doctor. I’m planning on discussing not only how painkillers work, but how our bodies, mine in particular react to the medications and when we deprive our body of these ‘ingredients’ we use frequently and long term, when taken by people, when they live with chronic pain.

When we take pain medication, it doesn’t have an effect on the part of the body that is hurting; it takes effect on our brain. To be precise it takes effect in ‘three specialized regions of the brain: the physical sensation region that identifies and localizes the pain (somatosensory cortex), the emotional feeling region that experiences suffering (limbic system), and the thinking region that assigns meaning to the pain (frontal cortex)’. Source

To simplify this, any type of analgesics (painkillers), don’t effect the area that’s injured, they simply block the pain signals going to the brain, or interfere with they way the brain interoperates these signals. This in turn affects the body’s nervous system so that pain messages are scrambled.

There are two types of painkillers: Non-narcotics and Narcotics. I'm mostly on the latter unfortunately. I won’t go into the difference between the two, too much because I want to share my story. If you’re interested in the types of painkillers, you can find infomation here.

As I’ve just mentioned I'm mostly on the narcotic variety of painkillers. Narcotics can involve much more than the generalised assumption of opiates like heroin or morphine etc but it also includes codeine which in lower doses is available over the counter at your pharmacy and even your body’s natural narcotic; endorphins.

Over the past 11 months, my body has endured an increased amount of narcotic medicine including oxycontin, oxycodine, and also morphine and pethidine while hospitalised but also during this latest experience, it’s been the highest dosages of this forms of painkillers I’ve ever been on. While my pain medication expands much beyond these, in the form of various types of muscle relaxants and anti-depressants, it’s reducing the oxycontin that has the most effect on me. Oxycontin is similar to morphine, but it’s a slow release medication, that has a 12 hour controlled release of its ingredients to give you greater control over your pain long term.

Over the past 8-9 weeks I have started my journey into reducing my body’s dependence on this drug. As pleased as I am to say “I feel that I no longer need the same amount of this medication anymore”, I know my body is addicted to it. This addiction means that to reduce the side effects of coming off this medication, I have to take it slowly and carefully, so that I don’t make myself ill and cause serious harm to my body. Because of the type of pain and injury I have, this is the 4^th time I have started the withdrawal process of coming of my pain medication, and I hope it’s to be the 4^th time, I will do so, successfully. At this moment (8^th June 2010) I'm 1/3 of the way on this journey of reducing my pain medications, so I can once more become effective and efficient in my daily life. (Although I know many people function quite normally on these types of medications, I still find it quite foreign, and don’t like the way it takes control over my body).

The first two times I have done this process quite quickly and with little side effects as I was not on the oxycontin for any longer than 4 months. During my 3^rd experience with this drug, I was taking it for a period of 10 months before I started “coming down” and I can honestly say I really felt the side effects of reducing the meds too quickly. I’ve experienced vomiting, diarrhoea, nausea, cramping, headaches, hot and cold sweats, and loss of appetite to name a few. This was 2 years ago. I remember while going through this, that I said I was never going to take oxycontin again, if I was to be in a similar condition. Well here I am again. Having reduced my intake by a 1/3 now, very slowly some other side effects are starting to show as I continue to reduce my body’s dependence on the drug. I'm already starting to experience:

• Nausea
• Cramping
• Diarrhoea
• Headaches
• Fatigue
• Night sweats

…and this is just so far. Coming off oxycontin and its withdrawal is often compared to a person going through a ‘heroin withdrawal’ in terms of its intensity. The only we have some control over this experience is to take the time to reduce the medication slowly, in small amounts and over a long period of time. Sometimes I think it would be easier to come of the medication easier and much quicker by reducing it every 3-5 days as opposed to every 1-3 weeks and just get the withdrawal pains over and done with instead of drawing it out, but I have to remind myself to do it the healthy way that wont harm my body, or stress it out too much! I hate to think what it has done to my overall health in both my brain and my organs!!!

I hope I’ve explained this so it translates that we have to be aware of what we take to manage our pain, but most of all like food – make us aware of what we are putting in our body’s and its affects afterwards.

Thanks for reading, I appreciate it and any other input, or expiriences is welcome so feel free to comment!

- Jen xx

**note: when I write my blogs, I write the way I would speak most of the time, and I apologize if things don’t quite make sense or don’t come out clear. I have a tendency to write at night, and this is when I'm most medicated.

9 days and counting...

So I'm currently on the operation countdown. Or is it countdown operation? Anyway this is one operation I am not apprehensive about. I hope my surgeon does a good cleanout of my hip joint, has a thorough look around inside and out of the joint, while also checking out the trachanter (the boney bit that juts out of your leg bone). As mentioned in another one of my blog updates, this operation sort of sets the precedent for a hip replacement, and my pain treatment afterwards. The latest X-rays etc have shown arthritic deterioration of the bone, and although I shouldn’t hope for it, I do wish that there is enough deterioration for a hip replacement. You see, I don’t wish to go through this pain one more time before having a replacement. The hip replacement is the final end of the road, and I’d like to see the light at the end of the tunnel if I can jam in as many idioms into this sentence. Because this is the trigger for my pain, I don’t understand why we can’t remove the source of this trigger, and in return I have less pain. It seems like simply logic to me, however everyone who suffers from pain knows life is not that simple and logic sometimes doesn’t apply.

Anyway on the 3^rd of Feb, I’ll be going under the knife once more. I'm due in at the hospital at 6.45am which I guess means I'm first or second on the list for the day. I'm looking forward to my “last meal” as I’ve been calling it (my mother told me off for saying so) but I’ve chosen to eat at Meccah Bah in at docklands where they have one of the best Turkish roast lamb pizza’s I’ve ever eaten, and for entrée we’ll have mussels with the chickpea dipping sauce. I don’t know how they do it, but it’s the only way I will eat mussels! Yum!

Anyway I'm looking forward to updating soon.

Take care,

Jen xx

Life, Goals and Expectancies.

Hi you,

A friend of mine recently made a comment in her latest blog post about her previous goals and achievements and how her life has changed, now that those goals are now not achievable. I was thinking about this the night before she had posted. What were my goals prior to my accident and where is my life going now?

To begin with; I’ve always had a passion for sport and exercise and probably from around the time I was 15 or 16, I began to have an interest in health too. In year 10 we had a seemingly silly PE elective that was mandatory and didn’t have a good reputation from previous years. However this PE subject which was mostly about fitness with two physical classes each week, and this is when I decided I’d change my life around. During the course of this subject I went from an overweight teenager, who although enjoyed netball and many other team sports, was not technically“fit”, to a student who was enthusiastic about fitness and health, with a teacher who not only encouraged me personally but helped me gain control over my body again. From this I went onto achieve many things including a couple of Great Victorian Bike Rides!

This teacher among with my VCE PE and health teachers are the ones who inspired me to become a teacher myself, and help other students not only change their view of Phys Ed, but also enjoy themselves and begin to have an understanding of their body even if Phys Ed is not their preferred choice of subjects. These teacher's all had special qualities which i'd love to be able to emulate in some way and I definantly want to achieve a level of teaching where I can help students enjoy their studies they way my VCE PE teacher taught to me.

So I guess you could say I knew exactly what I wanted to be since year 10, and that goal hasn’t changed since.

Throughout VCE I undertook in a subject called Outdoor education and environmental studies. I thoughourly enjoyed not only the physical aspects of this subject such as camping, hiking, rock climbing, surfing etc, but also learning about the environment such as the different ecosystems around us, and what we can do to help them. After VCE, I enrolled in a university course of this nature, Outdoor education at La Trobe University. I deferred this course for a year for many reasons, one of which was my dad had been diagnosed with cancer again (for the 4^th or 5^th time), and I wasn’t ready to leave home. Throughout the year I had off my goals did not change. I even volunteered back at my old high school to help out with the outdoor ed program throughout the year. When it came time to ensure my place back in University, I found that they had begun a new course that was a double major of both Phys ed and Outdoor ed under an education degree. Absolutely perfect! I thought I’d struck gold and become the luckiest person alive when I was accepted. Particularly when I had to apply as a mature age student and only had one of nine places to fill for the non-year 12’s!

I had a pretty successful first semester and in second semester of my first year I had my accident. I continued for another year and a half taking withheld grades for the subjects I couldn’t complete because of the physical demands, and I continued to believe I was going to get better. By the time I had reached my 3^rd year of a 4 year course, my health in regard to my hip was going downhill fast. I took a year off, and after some deep thought decided to enrol in a double major of phys ed and HEALTH. It was very similar to my previous course, it was at the same campus, and best yet I could carry my completed PE subjects into the new course, making me have an almost complete PE major before I had even started a new 4 year course.

(2006 Alps trip, La Trobe Uni, Bendigo)

Once again, I had an even more successful first semester of uni, gaining high distinctions in 3 out of 4 subjects and missing out on the 4^th HD by only a few marks. By second semester, things had begun to unravel once again. The same story of which you have been previously reading about in earlier blog posts once again consumed my life and pushed out my studies. Now the New Year has begun, and once again I’m awaiting my now 4^th hip surgery. My expectancy of my goal of becoming a PE/health teacher is declining.

I’m a good student. My grades have shown that. I’m passionate about my subjects and what they are about. However….

I wonder how much more my body can take. I wonder how much more I can emotionally take and most recently what will my future hold? Will I be able to complete my university studies? Will I be able to spend the 8am to 5pm maybe even until 7pm days surrounded by students? Can I handle that? Emotionally and physically? I promised myself I’d never be a teacher who stood on the sidelines. I always planned to be actively involved because I think the ones that do make the best teachers.

I’ve spent the better part of just over three years on heavy prescription pain meds, and I’m unsure for how much longer I will be on them. I have a decent amount of nerve damage in my left leg which means that I can only achieve 2/3^rd’s of the strength the other leg can have, in other words, I’ve lost of 30% of my strength output. I’m now on anti-depressants (much to my despair) because I had reached a point where I can no longer emotionally deal with my physical pain.

I may have only been talking about one goal here, but it is a major part of my life right now and I’ve been thinking a lot about it. A lot of effort and time has gone into this goal, and many achievements have been made. It’s not only my time and effort, but those of my high school teachers, my lecturers, and my family and friends for getting me to this point.

I feel I have achieved so much, but yet I’m so far away from where I want to be. I had planned to study oversea's during first semester of my 3rd year. Will I ever get there? I am about to take more time off from my uni studies to recover from surgery and to come off the medication. Whats next for me? Am I destined to do what i've wanted to do for the last 7 years of my life?

It's hard enough worrying about having enough money to pay rent and the bills, in a home i hardly live in, let alone what does the future hold?

Take care and much love,

Jen xx

PS: post allows annoyomous comments

Woah? What on earth has happened?

Hi peoples,

Clearly, I haven't written in a while, but all in good reason. You see I haven't had access to a computer in the last 2 weeks, and some major shit has happened.

I went up to Uni (a 2 hour drive away from my Melbourne home), still in a lot of pain and still on crutches the day before i had to present a maths project (an oral presentation that had been put off for 5 weeks due to my "injury"). Arrived in good old Bendigo and although extremely sore from the trip, went off to the pub for a meal, and went back to my house. It was a pretty early night for me, and i went off to sleep as normal but many hours earlier than normal.
About 4am, I awoke in extreme pain, in my left butt cheek. I already knew i had a tear in the gluteus maximus, and was unable to explain the new onset as i had been asleep! Anyway i couldn't get comfortable and the pain was worsening so i took some medication. I cried quietly in pain while my mother slept beside me.
Although i knew something was seriously wrong, and i wouldn't be able to get back home to Melbourne on the medications i had available, i had to go to Uni and present, knowing it would only take 10-15 mins and i would be able to go to the hospital straight after.

I painfully arrived at the hospital in 10/10 pain, and was told to go wait in the waiting room. Actually she told me to take a seat, but knowing full well i couldn't sit down, which was half the reason i went there in the first place, and after informing her of this, she told me to lean again something instead. Within 10 minutes ( i wouldn't of lasted much longer) the doctor came to call me in. My mother followed. I layed down in the bed, then had to put on a gown as the Dr.'s decided to take a E.E.G. . I had high blood pressure and an extremely high heart rate, not unusual for someone in so much pain. After explaining the history to what felt like 10 different people (nurses, Dr.'s, student nurse's, student Dr,'s etc..) the chief Dr. came in to examine me. at one point he hit what seemed to be a bomb, as all pain spots in my legs exploded into extreme pain. The lovely screen that showed my BP, HR etc also erupted as my blood pressure rose to alarm levels as did my heart rate at 145 bpm.
The chief doc left to ring my new doctors to decide the best course of action. before i knew it, i was being wheeled off to the small intensive care part of the ED, as they started a Ketamine drip or shall i say 'shots mixed with a saline bag'. The first shot consisted of 20ml and i have never tripped out before, but i can tell you, i don't want to do it again. All i remember was a horrible experience, with people staying still, but the rest of the room becoming a blur. It reduced my pain for a short period of time, but as i came out of the hallucination, the pain came back, just as bad. Over the course of an hour, i had another two 'shots' containing about 10ml - luckily they didn't cause any hallucinations however didn't do much for the pain.
Before I knew it, i was being told they had a bed for me at a private hospital in Melbourne and were going to ambulance me down, and the paramedics would be arriving in approximately 5-10 mins. Holy shit somehow between 11 -2 disappeared in all of that and next thing i was aware of i was being transferred into an ambulance.

The Ambulance consisted of a bumpy ride of about 180km, i was treated to 2.5ml of morphine every half hour, on oxygen and we changed ambulances at Kyneton. I arrived at the hospital where i am now, between 5-6pm and i have remained here ever since. Before i forget to mention it, I spent my 23rd birthday in here (friday the 16th) which sucked, but i got lovely visitors which/but i guess it was just a good excuse for my friends to come visit.

Anyway back to that Thursday night I was put on a sub-cutanious ketamine drip which is attached into your stomach fat:










which was followed by an inflamed area with 20 hours or so:










After 4 days of this I eventually got it put in IV but I've also managed to get a rash there too. Ill save you the picture of my itchy scratchy spotty arm.

A few positives of my stay here however have been, I got to meet a fellow twitter friend @rellacafa, who I've shared many thoughts with and she's helped me get through some tough times in this hospital even! But Hayley was the one who inspired me to write this blog thing, and i can tell you, meeting her was definitely a highlight, and someone i know i will be friend with on and off the Internet. She was so kind, she even bought me a 'get better soon/happy birthday' gift and card!

Meet 'Brawson' - a small but inspiring bear to get through the hard times!

I was told he likes to play twister, sing karaoke and eat gingerbread!

However I've layed here for most of my 11 days so far, I'm only starting to work with the physio and psychologist and I'm not sure of how much longer ill be here for. Unfortunately i wont be able to blog again most likely, until i get home, so ill leave you with some pictures of some of the HOSPITAL food I've been getting. You can see all pics on my twitpic page but here the current ones are:

and they taste as good as they look!

As usual, feel free to comment, send me an email to jl4cummins@students.latrobe.edu.au, facebook me or message me on twitter @jencummins16.

hope to be back soon,

signing out,

Jen xo

PS you can get to Hayleys/@rellacafa's blog by clicking here

Who the F*@% am i shaving my legs for?/What do you do when your life is in the hands of another?

Hello,

To begin with i feel like i should start my blog with like a 'dear diary...' attitude because that's what it is essentially. Anyway I'm blogging about my week. My week was mostly made up of sleep and watching either TV shows or DVD's of TV shows. Interesting stuff huh? yeah that's how my life runs. Well here's the story of my week in BOLD


Well actually it started off with on Monday i rang the pain clinic that i was with for the past year and a bit, because although i don't necessarily get along with the doctor there, i have complete trust in their Physio, and value her opinion. I rang up and asked for an appointment and I got told because i have not been in since January, i was going to have wait up to 3 months for an appointment. This particular pain clinic has a 3-6 month waiting list for new patients so i naturally felt like I WAS BEING PUNISHED for not being in pain, or better yet, did not need their services for so long. I was incredibly angry. I chose not to take the end of December appointment because who knows what will have happened by then.



On Tuesday i had an appointment to see the GP. I see him on a pretty much 10 day basis, and for one time i was glad to see him. You see, he had taken two weeks leave, and not left any notice for another doctor who i was going to have to see in order to get my medication from. Nor had he discussed my situation with any other doctor in the clinic, so in order to get the medication i need every 10 days, i had to go through the same old story of what happened to me (ski accident - surgery 1, surgery 2, surgery 3 etc) to get what i needed to get me through till when my GP came back. My GP is fairly laid back and told me to continue treating my pain with the medication, after i told him i felt i had hit the end of what i can bear. rock bottom. the end. depression. Its just keep on truckin'


Wednesday, Mum rang the pain clinic, got the nice receptionist who put mum through to the physio, and once mum had explained the problem, the physio said "i had scheduled in administrative work Friday morning but come in then, ill see her" Bless her and my mum. what would i do without her.

Also on Wednesday i rang my surgeons office and spoke to his PA. I got told he had been forced to take a week off by his wife. Understandable when your at work at 7am and don't get home till after 8pm on some nights and have young children. However I had discussing what i wanted to say to him with mum, and i honestly didn't think i had the guts to say it to him because i knew I'd get emotional, so i told it all to his PA instead. I still got emotional but, it felt better out than in. His PA was an Orthopedic nurse so she's down with the lingo, if you know what i mean. I pretty much questioned:

- If its the tissue around and inside the joint cant we eliminate the problem? Can he do a partial hip replacement to do so, or..

- How long do we have to dance around the problem of the tissue in the hip causing me problems ? and

- How many times do i have to go through this for months at a time before you'll (he'll) do anything about it? 4, 5,10?

- I'M 22 for gods sake, trying my hardest to continue with life and my studies, with something that is holding me back constantly. I know i suffer from chronic pain. That's from the nerve damage, which I've had from day one after the surgery. I have managed to deal with that since, however when pain like the one I'm in now arrives, this is not something that can be treated with mind over matter, and physio and everything else that is involved in pain management.Ive done that before. I know when somethings wrong. Do I have to spend the next 10 months in and out of hospitals like i did last year before you take my word on something is mechanically wrong, or do you want to wait it out and make me prove you wrong again? Well if only my surgeon read this blog because he might understand how bloody angry that it makes me. I litterly feel like Ive hit the end.



I sleep all day, I'm awake most of the night. Sleep isn't a quality sleep. Its so difficult to shower now, and causes so much pain and so much effort I'm only showering once a week. And that's not a nice thing to put out there on the Internet people. i don't want to admit that but this is what its come to and I'm being brutally honest. I showered this evening and somehow found myself shaving my legs. Who am i doing that for? i hardly leave the house anymore, i don't see many people. Most social contact is unfortunately either txt or over social networking sites. I guess that's the one bit of vanity I've got left in me. I shaved my legs for me i guess.

Thursday: i don't remember much about this day, which probably means i slept the day away, however i do remember measuring my legs at night. I previously measured them after i finished up an assignment of exercise and since June, which has been the onset of pain, so i have been doing nothing, i have lost

7.5cm of hips/bum

2cm (R)(L) top thigh (under the bum)

2cm off (R) mid thigh

5cm off (L) mid thigh

2 cm of (R) calf and 3cm of (L) calf.

Friday: Friday was the biggest day of all! i went to the physio, she gave me exercise to help combat muscle wastage which i can now physically see, answered a few of my previous questions, and ultra-sounded my hip. The i went to Aldi, where i bought a laminator. Word is that it has been a very expensive maths assignmnet due to all the laminating costs, and altho i havnt got round to it yet, this is my first step to doing my assignments when i can. I also bought a paper cutting maching thingo.. you know, you measure your paper and then slide the blade across.. the word for it has escaped me for the time being but... It was a very big day out for me.

Sat/Sun almost didnt exist because i slept through all of it.

To sum up what to me has been a shitty week, has actually been fairly good. i saw the GP, physio, did i mention the chiropractor on monday? probably not.. she put my "major crutch back" back in place.. and i got to tell my surgeons PA what i was really feeling. MY life and wellbeing are in my surgeons hands now, and he has to decide what to do with it. Im over it.

At least i get to countdown 11 days to another birthday spent on crutches. could it get anymore depressing?

PS i wrote this all out earlier only to lose it to a problem error. the first draft was better.

signing out,

Jen xx

Sick of it...

A short blog tonight...
I'm sick of being in pain.
A quick visit to the surgeon on Thursday showed that he was not happy with my sudden increase of pain and decrease in mobility. To be honest. This scares me. i know when the pain moves into the groin, that this means trouble. I don't have time for another surgery. I took last year off uni, and i don't want to miss anymore. In the past 4 days my pain has gotten much worse. i have gone from limping to dragging my leg to relying on crutches to get around. My pain killer medication has more than doubled and after 3 surgeries and successfully withdrawing from medications, ill be looking at going through the process again. I know i cant prejudge whats wrong until i have the MRI scan on Saturday and get the results the following week, but I'm scared that if they find something, i will have to have ANOTHER operation, and if they don't find anything - why am I in so much pain and why do i have so many physical symptoms?
I'm sick of the pain, the routines, the vague memory, the forgetfulness and not being able to do anything productive. I'm sick of going through this whole process for a 4th time. what did I do to deserve this?

signing out,
Jen

Welcome to blog spot....

After reading other peoples blogs, i decided that maybe this may be the best way for me to write about my thoughts and expiriences that happen in the coming months.
You see to understand what i will proberly blog about, you'd have to know a little bit about me:

- Im a 22 year old student.
- I spend half of my week in the country, and the other half back in melbourne.
- I started uni in 2006, yet in 2009 i am a first year physical and health education student.
- I am vain enough that i wont wear the same thing twice with the same group of people when i go out.
- I love my friends.
- I love taking photos when im out, and i like the fact that i seem to have a photogenic face.
- I love exercise but cant often do it.
- I dont like beer, cake, donuts or chocolate.
- I have a weekness for anything made by wonka confectionary.
- I am blonde and blue eyed.
- My life revolves around my hip.
- The last 3 years have been the hardest time of my life and it often feels like it will never end.
- My dad passed away from cancer on the same day as my first hip operation.

Now to explain what i will mostly be blogging about. My hip. You see, i had an accident while on a uni outdoor ed camp and i dislocated my right knee, and somehow shove my left femur (leg bone) into my pelvis. Now although i didn't break any bones, i managed to successfully ruin my life from then on... To create a very long story into a short one, this hip injury was very difficult to diagnose, and after almost a month in hospital being poked and prodded, the doctors decided that i had ripped the labrum (hip cartilage) in half. This then sent me to have a private surgeon perform an operation where he put two pins and 6 titanium tacks in my hip joint. To shorten this story even further, in under 2 years I've had 3 surgery's in total on my left hip, for a second tear and boney growth within the joint/build up of scar tissue and now I suffer chronic pain.

Thats me and hopefully it will give you a basis of why i am about to start blogging about whats happening now. I think it may help me get out the frustration of pain, and doctors etc.

thats my first post and not my last.
signing out,
Jen