Surprise! You have hip dysplasia!

I had my 7 week follow up appointment today, and it wasn't very reassuring. I know that it's only been 7 weeks, and I still have to wait and see, but I am not recovering very quickly. I still have a lot of pain, I'm pretty limited in my activities, and after he made me bring my knee to my chest, I could hardly walk the rest of the day. It's not terrible, but it's not great, especially considering that the tear-related damage wasn't bad at all.

So while I know that things should get better, there is still a concern that they won't. Today, my doctor revealed to me that I have hip dysplasia, and if the hip impingement surgery isn't successful, we can look at fixing the hip dysplasia (requiring open hip surgery, yuck). No thanks!

Just considering the 'if's:
-If this surgery doesn't work, I'm pretty sure I'm done with competitive sports. I am already contemplating my future in athletics anyway, but open hip surgery and the years of issues that typically follow are pretty good reasons to quit altogether given that I'd like to be able to walk when I'm 50. And maybe go on a hike.

-If the surgery does work, it still seems like a good idea to avoid activities that might cause problems (mainly activities with hip rotation, high impact, and probably the ones that cause my good hip to make terrible grinding/popping sounds). So that would mean goodbye breaststroke, goodbye running, goodbye weird dynamic stretches. Maybe this will be easier to adhere to now that I have a reason.

I do think, however, that focusing on something other than athletic competition might be good for me. So far, school has been a pretty good avenue to channel my competitiveness. I've attended a few networking events, and I already have a solid full-time job lead. In this economic environment, you gotta work to break into a new field, and that is exactly what I'm doing. This seems like it will be more rewarding long-term.