Not the Video We Wanted to Make

This is a normal hip right here. You recognize that? This is Jonah's hip. No femoral head. It's completely, utterly collapsed. Good hip, bad hip. I took Jonah on April 17th to his checkup with his surgeon, and she ended up just referring us out to a doctor in Charlotte and said we'd be getting a phone call, but And we requested records.

Yes, we requested all the medical.

We got photos immediately.

We got the images.

And we requested records. Today is a non-surgical orthopedic second opinion. Mom, you look so nice.

Oh, thank you.

I wish this were a more celebratory—

I know, right?

Event. How you feeling going into this, Joni? You feel happy? You feel confident? You feel defeated?

Mm, I don't know.

Just nervous, I guess.

I know you're nervous.

Looking at the x-ray, that bone flattened out.

Collapsed. The femoral head has collapsed.

The only thing that's gonna heal that is copious amounts of raw milk.

You're funny. I am sad because I feel like maybe we could have, if we would have known that this was happening so much.

Yeah.

Like, I mean, 2020 is always very hindsight, you know, like you can always see everything.

There are ways to get blood flow going to things like this before before they die, right?

Yeah, but how would I have known about any of this? You know what I mean? Like—

It makes me wonder if they even knew that it was gonna die so fast.

In one of the medical records I was reading, it did say that he has AVN or he's going to have AVN.

What's AVN?

Which is avascular necrosis.

And that's where the ball—

That's where the femoral head—

of the top of the femoral head, which is the top of the hip.

Well, the femoral head's the ball.

Oh, okay.

It, um, well, so we learned learned on Friday that he lost the blood supply from the top and from the bottom.

Yeah.

Because of the—

And you can be okay with losing the one from the top. It actually happens over time anyway.

Correct.

But the bottom one, there's no chance.

Yeah.

If it collapsed like a balloon and they can blow it back up with some sort of magic.

I don't know. There was some— I have, I have read, I've read a lot of different things online. So, um, obviously this doctor, she on her website does say that she can help, um, avascular necrosis. But it could be that he's too—

too far.

It could be that he's in a higher stage.

It feels like you could do it if it was like this and it was just starting to go.

Right, like right when it was—

But now it's—

But it's—

And I doubt it's like a balloon where you can pump up. I'm pretty sure it's pretty hardened. No, but— I don't know.

Say you got something like a piece of wood and then hit it with a sledgehammer. See what it looked like at the end. That's what it looks like.

Yeah.

So you can't really blow that back up.

Since that's bone on bone, there's really nothing he's going to be able to do about that gait until we figure something out. Does it hurt to walk?

Sometimes.

Does it hurt right now?

Not really.

Does it hurt to stand?

Sometimes, but if I cross my leg like that, it's more comfortable because it takes the bone pressure off.

Yeah, show me what's happening. So this That's not the femoral head.

This is the femoral head.

Half of it, right?

No, that's the whole thing. I mean, I don't know if that's supposed to be half of it. But this is— so he— this is—

where's the growth plate on this thing?

Well, it's not—

it's probably an adult. But the growth plates say here. What's only the top that's gone?

So it's like, right, it's collapsed.

One thing she did recommend was crutches.

Yeah, should we wait here for Mama?

You want to? Mom told us to go to the car, but she didn't give us the keys, and we should probably wait for her to talk about what we learned in there. I'll give you a hint, it only took 1 minute. I mean, she talked with us afterwards, but we knew it was up in 1 minute.

I was wondering where you guys went.

Sent us to the car with no keys.

Well—

We could have stood in the sun.

I know, I was thinking that.

Uh, Beck? We knew right away, didn't we? She's a straight shooter.

Yeah.

She's not a—

Appreciate that.

Snake oil salesman.

Yeah.

She just said, yeah, you're gonna have to have a total hip replacement.

Straight up total hip replacement, which, you know, I think it's—

And that's coming from a non-surgeon.

Yeah. Well, Well, and our chiropractor knows her and said that she'll either say you need to have the surgery or she can help you.

Yeah, I think you should end your boycott of Clean Juice and get him some.

I'll get him— I'll do it for my son. When he was in the hospital, I got it for him too. I don't do it— I have problems with certain companies. Unfortunately, two of those companies are in this thing. I have principles, okay?

Don't slight Rebecca in a shopping experience. Experience.

No, it's not.

She'll never— she'll never see you again.

You treat me with respect and kindness, I will, uh, shop at your store for forever. And you're rude and obnoxious, and I'm done with you.

Unless your boy needs a pickup, then you—

then I'll go back.

For some reason, I feel better that she said that she wasn't right.

Like, she could have strung us out. She could be like, oh well, we could try some stem cell. Should we go by that office and say let's have the referral. Because now what we're waiting on, guys, is a referral we should have gotten a week ago. Dr. Layman said go ahead and try to get in with the Charlotte doctor.

Yeah.

Without the referral and see if that can't get the ball rolling. Because sometimes they can request.

I feel like they did say at the— at the— our current doctor's office that they need to review it. The Charlotte doctor needs to review it and decide whether they're gonna take his case. On. So if that's the case, then maybe we are going to Duke, you know, type thing.

We're fine with the referral. It's a lady who has experience with hips in young people.

Pediatrics.

Hip replacement in pediatrics. A friend of ours' surgeon's— retired surgeon's dad said, well, maybe you want an educational center like Duke. She thought We should— the Charlotte sounds fine and it's half the distance. We just don't want to be patient.

Well, no.

You watch your child hobble around and be in pain and just drag your feet. Come on!

Like, what the heck?

We're just waiting on people to sign it? Like, oh, don't get me started.

What's this?

If I put my leg straight, it's a lot more comfortable.

I see.

So that's what we're doing.

We got you guys something in this brown bag. It's a sewing kit. One sewing kit for everybody. Hairbrush. I got you a cosmetic kit. Ooh!

I want one for me just after. You want one?

Yeah!

Because everybody's carrying a load because Jonah's out. Also, it's to celebrate knowing something. Henry. Knowing our direction.

Henry's carrying quite the load.

Do you help out extra because Jonah's out?

Yeah. Do you milk the cow?

Yeah, 26. Do you feed the pigs? Yeah. Can you say cow?

Yeah.

What medicine you got him on?

Oh, it's just—

How does that help him?

Well, it's not necessarily for this issue. I don't think there's anything helping that issue.

A crutch.

The crutch.

Doc yesterday recommended a crutch. How does that feel on a crutch?

It doesn't hurt as bad.

It's interesting you put it on the right leg, the strong leg.

Because if I put it on this side, it like does not work. You put— it's for some reason if you put it on this side, it's because it moves with that leg.

Oh really? You're supposed to put it on the strong side.

Yeah, because you use that as your— as the brace would go with your leg. See, you lean on that side.

I've been doing it all wrong this whole time.

We had a friend's father who was a retired orthopedic surgeon. His specialty was not hip, but it was fine. Um, but he sat down and walked us through all of the images that we had on the CD that we'd gotten from our doctor.

And then you can see this dark area right here. Well, that's actually where the joint is. All you can see on an x-ray is the bone, so you see the bone. So you have cartilage on the acetabulum, which is here, and you have cartilage on the femoral head, which is here. It's called a ball and socket joint. That's kind of the way it is. And you have a growth line, right? This is the femoral head, and this is the growth line. This is also a growth line here in the pelvis, and those close up in the next few years. So that's just part of growth, but that's, that's kind of what it looks like in a normal joint. And then if you look here, you can see that is September 13th, 2022, and you can see that ball is out of place. Yeah, this ball here, Jonah, is supposed to be in— where did that come from? It's supposed to be right in here. In the operating room, they put it back in. You can see the head of the femur now in the acetabulum, right where it's supposed to be. But they put pins in because they noted when they put that thing back, it was loose between here and here. This doesn't look the same. Right in there. That's that growth line. Of course, you can't see the blood vessels, but the other thing you notice is look at the distance in the joint from here to here and here to here. This distance is greater than here to here. So they say, well, something's wrong. This side isn't like it should be. So they got a CAT scan. When they got the CAT scan, you can see again the distance is greater on this side than over here. But you can also see this white stuff in here, right? And don't forget, the white stuff is bone.

Okay.

Now what you can't see when you have a joint is you've got your ball and socket joint, but it's held together by all these ligaments. Look, you can't see those on x-ray, but the piece of this bone was on the edge of that ligament, and that's what's into— it didn't get out of the joint when they reduced it. Sitting just real nice on that cone. We know there's a problem there. The pins are in perfect position. That looks pretty darn good.

Yeah, we went in and she said everything looks great. That's what she was saying.

Okay, now, okay, we're on January 23rd and all of a sudden things aren't looking quite so good.

Oh wow.

Okay, now this is Uh, January 23rd. And this is a frog lateral, but look, the femoral head has collapsed so much the pins are going through into, you know, what's left of the joint there. So that means obviously the pins have to come out. This is an incredibly unusual injury, and the blood supply just has to be compromised. Okay, you, you just there's no way that this femoral head can be dislocated and the growth line disrupted and have blood supply.

So can I ask you this question? If they would have gotten him like into the OR quickly, would this— would it still have been the same outcome?

Absolutely.

Okay, it didn't matter. It would no matter how long it was.

Okay, uh, no, the whole— all of this was predictable. The minute it happened.

Okay.

Really, the minute it happened. I mean, what they've done, I think it's beautiful. It's really, everything's just fine, but this is what happens. You just can't have this magnitude of injury and not really do anything.

And they just didn't know with the first operation because they didn't have the films to back it up. Yeah.

So I mean, it's just, um.

Yeah, I mean, I guess too, I, they, you know, they kind of said Nobody ever sat us down and said like, this is a really traumatic injury.

Understand, understand. And, uh, well, well, maybe— well, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. There's— there can be a very good end to this. We're not to the end of the story yet. I know.

He basically walked us through what he thought would get recommended and basically told us that Jonah is going to need a total hip replacement.

Replacement.

It's hard to hear that your 15-year-old is gonna need a total hip replacement.

After this meeting, that put a— oomph in getting this appointment with Charlotte, and since we haven't gotten the referral, we're like, can we just make our own appointment? And sure enough, you can just go online and make her an appointment, and we did, and we're heading to Charlotte. Tired yet?

I feel alright right now.

6:35.

Yeah.

You've already been up 2 hours.

I've been up longer than that. I was up at 4:15.

Jonah, you tired yet?

Yeah, I'm tired.

What do you hope to get out of today?

Some clarification of what the future is going to hold.

Basically, we're going to hope to just go in there and schedule surgery. That's basically what this is.

I mean, I want to hear her thoughts on what she thinks we need to do and what the— what— I mean, if she suggests other things, other surgeries, besides a total hip replacement, there's lots of questions I want to ask. You know, like how long will this get him? Is it actually gonna get him some mobility? Is he gonna be able to function? Because he's not. He hasn't—

he has—

his quality of life has decreased. You know, he's 15. He shouldn't have a decreased quality of life at this age. You know, why? Why? Because the other people we've talked to including a non-surgical, is like— a total hip replacement is the only answer at this point. So yeah, I mean, I think that just getting some— and can she do it? Is she qualified? That's part of it, you know. I— I want the best working on his hip at this point, you know. Is this where we're meeting? No, we're going to the appointment. We're going to their office.

Go slow.

Track loader could—

Really? You're going so fast. Did we make it?

We made it. This is it.

We just got admitted into the waiting room. Right on time. Records in. Mom didn't think you would ever change change his shoes again.

No, here I am.

Needing the shorts. How'd you guys know that would happen?

Because we've done this. We've done this.

They come in, they're like, I'm gonna get you some shorts, and you guys are like, we have them.

What do you hope they say? I don't know.

I don't know what I want.

I want him—

schedule him for 2 weeks.

I want him to be restored. That's what I want, but I don't know what that looks like.

You want his youth back?

Yeah, I want him to be able to run and jump I can play and swim and squat and do things that normal 15-year-olds do.

I gotta get this on record. What did you just say?

I can't wait to milk comfortably.

Oh, okay, we have it on record, folks.

We saw the doc.

She can't— she can't have this.

Well, she does have an option called fusion.

She did say she could do a fusion, but She wouldn't necessarily recommend it.

She wants us to talk to the joint replacement doctor.

Total replacement doctor. That's all he does.

That's all he does. He's really good at it. He's not pediatric. He's adult and—

If we fusioned him—

He will not have range of motion. He won't have range of motion but no pain.

You didn't like the fusion option. Why not?

I just don't like that idea.

That was a very nice and competent doctor.

Yes, yes, very nice. Gave us so much time.

You need help? Basically a sad story. She can get us in with the surgeon, maybe. Normally he's 6 months before he can do surgery. 3 months to be seen. She's gonna try to— get us in for surgery in 3 months because he's 15.

Yeah.

And not 70 and he's got a lot of life.

He needs— and losing a lot— losing this much time in a 15-year-old is way harder.

You didn't like fusion because you want your range of motion, right?

Yeah.

Is that right?

Well, I think what we just need to do is just talk.

The problem with total hip replacement, she was saying, was he's gonna have to have it redone because he's gonna be hard on it.

Revised.

And every time you revise it, you have to take more bone. And if you do a fusion, he's gonna have to live with that. And having no range of motion until he's 30.

Well, I mean, I think you could, you could get it probably, you could probably get it done at 25. That was one, that was one thing that I do remember—

Still, that's 15 years.

I think our friend's father had said like, maybe there's something that they can do to get you to 20 or 25. But like, there's no squatting. If you're fused, there's no squatting, and then they're talking about killing growth growth plates. I don't like that. I don't want to kill any growth plates.

There are other things like lifts and stuff like that we'd want to do before we kill a growth plate.

Yeah.

That's crazy. I was not expecting to be referred out again.

I know. Well—

We have a main doctor who referred us here who now we're getting referred out.

But I am glad that we don't have to go to Duke.

So we're gonna take Jonah to clean juice. There's a clean juice place Green juice, it's one of his favorite things.

Yeah.

Get a snack. The original surgeon, I guess, had sent us there hopeful that it would be some sort of preservation.

Right.

And, um, I don't know what in the world. Well, she did offer us fusion, which is taking a plate and fusing this together, and he would have no hip movement, but at least he wouldn't be in pain.

So he would have basically the same thing that's happening now. He just wouldn't have no pain.

And then you have to have a hip replacement in 10 to 15 when he's, uh, 30.

By the—

by the time he's 30. You know, I've researched that now, and I just don't know if that's the best thing. She wanted us to talk to—

no, she didn't like it either.

Yeah, yeah, she definitely—

she recommended hip replacement, but she doesn't do hip replacement. Yeah, so she said—

go ahead.

She said she would refer us out. She seemed to care.

She does. She's like, he's 15, he really needs, you know, he's got a lot of life ahead of him. We really need to get this taken care of. So she was referring us out to the best, I guess, hip replacement surgeon in, in Charlotte.

That was April 17th when I went to that initial appointment with the surgeon. We know the answer, but we're just waiting.

We just have to get to the right person. Time. This doctor that she referred us to is 3 months out to be seen, in addition to, uh, 6 months out for surgery. Now she said though that basically, um, the chance that she was going to pull some strings, um, and she did pull some strings and she got us into, um, his office or his— whoever got us in, um, at the end of this month. So we are 6 weeks from our initial appointment.

Also during this time, somewhere in there, Jonah and Josiah came to us and be like, I want to sell the motorcycle and the four-wheeler.

The motorbike, yeah. We were like, okay.

And we figured we'll sell both those units and we'll get a safer unit for them, which is side-by-side. Actually, this was all their idea, and I mean, it's our idea in our heart, and we went for it. And enter Salma. You ready?

Yeah!

Salma the side-by-side! The name Salma means safety!

We are not under some illusion that Salma is gonna be— that nothing too bad can happen if we're with that machine and as opposed to another machine. We realize that every day we take risks whether it's getting inside a car or whatever, that there are risks to life.

That's why I'm naming her Salma, to summon the universal energy to that name so that it'll live up to its name. Just like we named him Studmuffin back— yeah, we made him Studmuffin not because he was already a stud muffin, because he was— because we, we pushed the energy on, onto him.

It's definitely been a hard journey with realizing that our choices definitely are, you know, affect our lives. And, you know, Jonah has definitely learned that lesson. And, um, it's hard to watch your kids learn lessons, but at the same time, um We are happy that they decided to— yeah, not have a full bladder.

Jenna would be sitting right here, but you'd probably be— they're out running around in the rain. Literally the day after we got Salma, we had finally gotten a call back from that doctor's office, scheduled the appointment for the end of May. Yes, and this is the kind of doctor the doctor that would have— I'm told that would have reviewed this.

Yes.

And would not be seeing us if he would not schedule a surgery. Of course, I'm gonna have a little minor PTSD about that.

Yeah.

Driving all the way to Charlotte to be told I got— which is 2 hours for us. You're gonna have to— oh wait, I can't do it. Somebody else.

Yeah, so what the lady who was scheduling the appointment— basically, you— nobody can just schedule an appointment with this doctor. Um, I mean, you can if you're a certain age, but not just, you know, there has to be parameters. Anyways, she basically said they need to make sure that they can actually help us and that we're not wasting their time and they're not wasting our time. And so, um, the scheduler got in touch with the doctor's, like, number, like, the person right under the doctor who does, like, all of, like, is in surgery with him. I think she's a nurse. I have no idea who she um, and she personally messaged me, hey, I've, you know, we've got your information and this is when your appointment is, and if you need anything, let me know in the meantime. So I'm assuming because they had to accept us that, um, they are going to be able to help us. And, and the doctor that we saw in Charlotte, the other doctor, the first one we were referred to, was like, no, you need to see this doctor. So I'm assuming we are finally getting to who we actually need to see, which is going to be great.