All Day I Dream About Squats

Strange heading for a post I know. In all honesty, it’s something that I do a lot but I’ll get more into that later. What do you daydream about? I feel like I’m constantly living in a daydream and sometimes need to be pulled back to reality. It’s either about work, life goals, my next vacation, or even what I’m going to have for dinner. You name it, I have probably daydreamed about it. But recently it’s been about squatting and the reason is because I haven’t been able to do it in months.

As some of you may know I tore my labrum in my hip a few months ago and have been struggling with what to do to fix it. The options were: do nothing and live with the pain, surgery to repair the tear or to try a new cutting edge injection called PRP.

Knowing that I couldn’t live with the pain or having to cut back on being as active as I am, I went to a few doctors and got a few different opinions. After many doctors visits and about a month of weighing my options, I decided that I would rather try PRP before I went the surgery route.

PRP stands for Platelet Rich Plasma which is an injection that they create from your own blood. This treatment is  known to stimulate healing in parts of your body that don’t normally heal on their own. Since Labrums don’t heal on their own and since my tear wasn’t huge, my orthopedic surgeon recommended that I try it.

On the day of my first injection, I went into Stem Cell Arts to have my blood drawn (24 tubes) and it took about two-hours for them to concentrate the platelets to create my injection. After devouring a few breakfast tacos at Taco Bamba during my two-hour wait, they took me to a nice private room where they took a look at my labrum via x-ray and ultrasound. My doctor identified the tear and then went in with the needle, with ultrasound guidance, and laid the PRP over the tear from many different angles. It took about 45 minutes and was only slightly painful.  I was able to walk out of the office, with only a slight limp, and went home to rest for the remainder of the day. The next day I was extremely sore, so I took it easy for the next few days and then was able to go about my normal routine. Except for what I was doing in the gym, I had to be very careful and slowly was able to ride the bike and do upper body exercises. I also saw a Physical Therapist (and still am) to help rehab my hip and to slowly build muscle around the injury.

Six weeks after the first injection I went in for round two, which happened to be yesterday and am feeling much better this time around. The injection wasn’t as painful and I am up and walking with only a slight limp.  The doctor also said that it looks like my tear is already showing signs of healing, so I am super optimistic that this is working!

The only downfalls with this procedure are that there isn’t a 100% guarantee that it works and that it isn’t covered by insurance. They say that it usually takes 6-8 weeks to know if it heels and usually takes 2-3 injections to see great progress. But you can avoid surgery and all the recovery time that comes with it so that is why I went the PRP route. There are a few limitations involved like I can’t lift or squat (which is killing me) but I will be doing that very soon nice I’m healed.

I head back to the doctor in about 6 weeks to evaluate my progress and to see if I am healed up or if I will need another injection. And hopefully soon I will no longer have to dream about squatting, I will be doing it!

**Hopefully, none of you have injuries that you are dealing with our have to go through a procedure like this but I thought it would be helpful to give you a little insight to what I am doing and the options out there to heal an injury like mine. If you have any questions about the procedure and my recovery, please feel free to ask away! And most importantly, stay healthy my friends!