I went to the doctor today and got more x-rays done. Things looked about the same as last week. The femoral head looks solid. No progress and no failure of the hardware. The doc keeps saying that the hardware will fail eventually, so the body's healing needs to take over before that happens.
From reading about bone healing, if new bone doesn't form, scar tissue can form isntead. For low-stress bones, you might not even know, and eventually it can calcify. That won't work on a femur. So, it really needs to be growing bone, or something else needs to be done.
The something else is either a total hip replacement (doc didn't think a half-replacement would last more than 5 years with me), or a much more invasive procedure. The invasive procedure would be to go in and clear out the scar tissue, debride (debreed?) the bone and re-pin it. Of course, he mentioned that doing it again could result in the same failure as the first time.
I really prefer my own bone- the body maintains it for life. So if there's a chance of it working I want to go with that. But, the issue all along is will the femoral head live? The doctor has set me up for a CT scan this week and another appointment next week.
With the CT scan, we'll be able to see a 3-dimensional view if the bone is really aligned and how well. Then we can make a better decision.
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