It’s been more than three months since I updated, and I guess I should let you know how things are going with my hip. I just checked my last post (Jan 4th), and apparently it took even longer than I remember for the cortisone shot to get me back to 100% – I was thinking I was back to normal by mid-December (about a month after the shot), but it seems I still had a little ways to go by early January.

So it’s been a bit more than three months since I could no longer even notice any symptoms of the condition that had become the dominant fact of my life, the determining factor in what I would or wouldn’t be able to do on any particular day. I  now also have some clarity regarding my underlying condition – since the hip joint shot eradicated my symptoms without needing to do anything with the bursa, it’s definitely arthritis rather than bursitis that’s the problem.

But three months is also about the length of time that the specialist thought that the shot would last, so it’s impossible to take any of this for granted – symptoms could return at any moment. I know that there’s a limit to the number of cortisone shots I can have, and that hip-replacement surgery could still be in my future. But for now I can focus on the next big task – getting myself to a more-affordable part of the country. More about that next time.