The story of Ella
My name is Ella, and for the past three years of my life I have been dealing with legg-calve perthes disease. It’s a hip condition mostly common in young male children but I was diagnosed at 14 in 2021, it makes your blood flow to your hip stop so it starts to collapse. I used to be a competitive gymnast but I stopped in 2021 and right after was my diagnosis. In December 2021 I had my first surgery to try and help with my pain and to help create blood flow but it didn’t end up working. Normally in this situation they would just wait for the child to grow and then fix it but since I was fully grown they couldn’t do anything at that point. I went through iv treatment for my pain and to help the density of the bone but it ended up only working a little for the pain and not for bone density. After another year and a half my pain started to get unmanageable so they decided to put me on the emergency list for a full hip replacement at 16. May 1 2023, was my surgery date. Surgery went really well and I was in the hospital for 3 days just to make sure everything went good. I’m so happy living my partly normal life now but I still have a long way to go in my recovery and my future replacements.