Today, I was stressing while at the VA here in Tucson. I had two appointments at the main hospital. The first was not so bad, but my blood pressure was still high because I was nervous about the 2nd appointment. The first was with a practical nurse who is going to be helping me with losing weight to help take pressure off of my hips, which I have torn the labrum in. Both hips have tears and a cyst developing on the left hip. The 2nd appointment was the one that really had me anxious as hell. It was for getting injections into both hips to try to alleviate pain. The staff was really friendly, but it took about 15 minutes for the first injection to be in the right spot. The radiologist could not get the inducer into the right spot for the steroids to go into the top of the hip joint. This really made my anxiety shoot through the roof because I could feel the pressure of the needle going into the joint area and felt like it was hitting bone a few times. Now that everything is done, the pain has been mostly gone, except for the lidocaine wearing off where the injections went in through the skin and muscle.

I just hope the injections last a while so that I can be a little more prepared for the procedure to be done again in about 12 weeks. It won't be fun but if that is what the VA wants to do to avoid surgery I will do it again.

Take care of your bodies and get the help if you need it, both physically and mentally.