FO II: Return of the FO

After a few days of trying not to go totally mental, and trying to only call the office 2 times per day, I finally had an excellent conversation with Dr. Buly about why he wants to do the FO rather than the PAO. He said that if he did the PAO, it wouldn't address the problems created by the femur. There are 3 things wrong right now: the socket is too shallow, the femur angle is too steep, and the femur is retroverted which causes impingement (why I can't internally rotate my leg). Doing the FO would address 2 of these problems, doing the PAO would only address the first one.

The FO will put the femur head deeper into the socket, so even though the socket is shallow, it might mean that the pain would be gone and there would be no need for a PAO. I asked about doing both surgeries at the same time and he said it was possible, but that it's a lot of surgery, and that he didn't think in my case that it was absolutely crucial to do both. He said that this was the conservative choice of surgery and that he thought it would have the best outcome with the least amount of messing around in there.

The other thing, and this is what made me happy, is that Dr. Helfet at HSS agreed with him that the FO was the right one to do. I am going go in and see Dr. Helfet and talk to him about it as well. At this point I may not go up to Boston - as my friend said, you stop when you have an odd number of opinions!!

Overall it made me feel much more secure about the decision to go ahead with the FO on April 24th with Dr. Buly, which is what I'm going to do. And I'm enormously relieved to have my questions answered so fully. By Dr. Buly. Clearly I feel better if I'm rhyming.

Anatomy buffs they detach the vastus lateralis (one of the quads) from the origin point on the femur and slide the metal plate underneath.