Hello my name is Teresa

Pinkpower21
Pinkpower21 Member Posts: 4
edited 28. Nov 2023, 14:06 in Living with arthritis

I’ve jus found out I’ve got arthritis in both of my hips and I get really bad lower back pain going down in my right leg , and wen I walk it doesn’t get any easier so I can’t walk far any advice for me many thanks

Comments

  • chrisb
    chrisb Moderator Posts: 669

    Hi @Pinkpower21 and welcome to the Versus Arthritis forum. 

    You’ve recently been diagnosed with arthritis in your hips triggering lower back and leg pain. You are also struggling to walk any distance and would like advice from any forum members who have faced a similar situation. 

    Here are a couple of links to articles, including one on pain relief, that you may find useful:


    This link suggests a variety of exercises to strengthen you hip which may help your mobility thus increasing the distance you are able to walk:


    Hopefully other forum members can provide you with advice based upon their own experiences. 

    I would encourage you to participate in as many forum discussions as possible to maximise feedback on the advice you’re seeking. 

    Best Wishes

    ChrisB (Moderator)

    Need more help - call our Helpline on 0800 5200 520 Monday to Friday 9am to 6pm

  • Thank you so much for your advice it’s much appreciated

  • RogerBill
    RogerBill Member Posts: 223

    Hi @Pinkpower21 I also have hip osteoarthritis for which I'm having a hip replacement operation in a few weeks time. Like you I can't walk very far and I'm suffering from back pain and some pain in my abdominal muscles. I'm afraid the post I've just written in this thread doesn't offer any solutions, but it does include some interesting points on the relationship between hip OA and back pain: https://community.versusarthritis.org/discussion/54968/hip-osteoarthritis-and-back-pain#latest

    My only suggestion that might help is to try to do some exercises. In my area you can self-refer to Dynamichealth, this is a physiotherapy service funded by the NHS. I had a number of sessions with them but after three months I found their resistance band exercises started to cause pain in my knees. I then switched to some pre-hip replacement operation exercises I found on the internet by Lou Grant who is a UK physiotherapist who had a hip replacement herself. Initially these seemed to help but now I think I may have to search for some other exercises.

  • I’ve tried physiotherapy before found it made the pain worse, and I can’t take ibuprofen and nurofen because I had a heart attack few years before . so I’m taking tramadole and Gabapentin with paracetamol it takes the edge off the pain for a short time. But I’m in so much pain wen sleeing plus suffer with the most painful cramps in my right leg

  • Lilymary
    Lilymary Member Posts: 1,740

    Hi @Pinkpower21 , I have OA in both hips, just had one replaced. I'm afraid pain killers do only take the edge off the pain when it gets bad, so you need a few more tools in your armoury. I found some of the tips in this link really helpful.

    In the lead up to surgery I also found physio and exercise (eg walking etc) resulted in too much pain in my joint so it wasn't really feasible. But whatever you can manage really helps, both in building the muscles to support the joint, and ultimately in recovery time post hip replacement. If it's hurting, just scale it back to much gentler movements, and as the muscles build you may find you can do just a little more. It may seem pointless as the exercises are so gentle, but it really does make a difference over a period of months (you won't see any improvement in a matter of days or weeks, but my physio assures me that it will all build up to something worthwhile in the longer term).

    At night I slept with my body propped up on an arrangement of pillows and cushions to put me in a posture that my hip could best tolerate. in my case, I tend to sleep on my stomach and my bad hip didn't like being straight - it found a pinch point at the front of the joint, so I put a pillow under my hip so the hip joint remained flexed, and another under my foot so my knee was also flexed, and that seemed to work. Experiment and see what works for you. I also took a couple of painkillers before I went to bed. The pain would still wake me up sometimes, but it definitely helped.

  • RogerBill
    RogerBill Member Posts: 223

    Hi again @Pinkpower21@LizB12 I had my total hip replacement operation 12 days ago (further details in the "hello" section of this forum). It's too early to say whether the op has improved my back and knee pains but early signs are encouraging. The arthritis pains are gone but as I'm in the early stages of recovery unsurprisingly I've other pains which are different (seem more muscular as you'd expect). But although there are ups and downs the general trend is that my pain and mobility is improving which certainly is a better outlook than before my op. Also I'm now generally down to just two or three ibuprofen or paracetamol per day.

    One of the physiotherapists I saw after my operation said I was in better shape than most and that this was probably due to the exercises I'd done over the seven months before the op. I've another physio appointment this week and will report back if I learn anything more.