Dislocated Hip

First, cool forum, ONS!

Second, I dislocated my hip in a downhill mountain bike race back on Halloween. After the fall I tried to stand up...fell over...rolled onto my back and saw my left leg pointing across my body. Immediately tried to get it back in by leveraging my body weight against the leg to make it face, um, correctly. Tried a second time as hard as i could. Third time a more knowledgable spectator pulled straight down on the leg as I turned and POP it went back in.

Total time out of wack, maybe 1 min, 1 minute 30 seconds.

Took it relatively easy for the next couple days...icing, went to the ER when i got back to Burlington and got some pain killers, but didn't feel too sore. Within a couple days it was feeling pretty good. Since then I've been stretching and doing light lifting, and more recently getting as many runs on snow as possible.

I guess where this is going is: has anyone else had this problem? Has it reoccured? Will i need surgery?(ah!)

I've never dislocated anything before, I just know it's better to get it in sooner than later.

That is a nasty injury. If you haven't seen an ortho you you should.

I second the "get it looked at" for sure.

I did my hip last season - after falling felt like someone hit my ass cheek with a sledge hammer...tried to turn over once with no luck, twice with no luck, then knew I was done for. Mine was dislocated for 3-4 hrs before I got some fabulous morphine and three doctors yanked it back into place. I was a good boy and did what the dr told me - stayed off it, did PT (though mostly on my own), and I've been out a few days this year and all is well.

Bottom line from what I was told:
1. To dislocate it you have to tear some combination of muscel/ligament/tendon/cartilidge, so PT is mandatory
2. It takes such force to dislocate, often you'll fracture your femer; sometimes - though I would think you'd know - you'll even chip off a piece and it can remain in the joint.

These are things you can know with xrays and cats so go find out; or just take the view of if you're screwed you're screwed, so just do what you do and get a titanium one 10 yrs down the line.

Last thing I was warned about is that sometimes the blood supply to the femers head can be ruptured, which more of less turns into ostioprosios (spelling...I know...) down the line, but there's no way to determine for at least a few years if it applies to you.