Reading log: 1
Text title: Perthese disease
Text type: short text
In the article about Perthes Disease it states that "it's not curable" and this is because they don't know what causes this to happen. "Perthes disease is when the femoral head stops getting blood supplied to it which causes it to deform and die. This is a self-limiting disease of the femoral head comprising of necrosis, collapse, repair and re-modelling." I know this is 5 times more common in boys than in girls. It also often affects children who are very active, even athletic. "There are fewer than 5% of people who are effected in both hips. Patients who are affected commonly have the same trait of short stature, delayed bone age and hyperactivity." The symptoms involved are "limping gait and pain radiating to the thigh, knees, groin or even buttocks." The pain does get worse with activity. The treatments depend on the age of the patient. I can relate to this because I am one of these people who has this rare disease and it is rare because it says "it effects an estimated 1 to 3 in 1,200 children under age of 15 and for girls it is 1 to every 4 boys."
This has effected my life majorly because it took a while for the doctors to diagnose me with the disease because they weren't listening to my mum. When they finally diagnosed me they put me down for an emergency surgery when I was 4 years old. With this emergency surgery it happened close to when I was starting school and caused me to start school in a wheelchair and got me a lot of bullying. It is hard going through school because the teachers don't really care or pay attention to it. I had to give up some sports because of the constant activity and pressure put on my hip. I ended up with hospital appointments until I was 10 or 11 years old and still have them only when it is most needed. I feel pain most when it is cold and when I move to much, I sometimes feel the ball of my hip and the socket grind against each other after I sit down for a long time. The ball and the socket grind against each other because of the deformity of the ball now and because it is much bigger than the other. With the surgery it should of been a 2 and half hour surgery but turned into a 5 hour surgery because they had to push my leg up and cut of the top part of my leg. That being said my left leg is shorter than my right. A long-term effect of this is that it takes affect on my future. Pregnancy would be a lot harder than it should be because carrying the baby would put pressure on my hips mostly on my right hip even though it is my left hip that is effected. This is because when my left hip is higher than my right and will push the baby over to the right side and put pressure on it causing damage to it. To give birth naturally rather than having a Cesarean would be extremely painful and it will be possible that my left hip will pop out of place and with the damage on the right hip I would have an emergency surgery to replace my hips. I will also need to have kids earlier on they say from the age of 19-25 years old. With the deformity of my hip it could cause me to have arthritis in the hip if I don't have surgery later on in my adulthood.
