Posts by Rachel Brown

Honestly, you’d be better off just asking the actual doctor who gave you that diagnosis to walk you through the translation. It could mean absolutely anything—we're talking anything from a serious medical emergency to just some minor misalignment in your knee, patella, or joint.

I forgot to mention that I have to be incredibly careful with my knee. I can only put enough weight on it to walk normally; nothing more. No running, no stairs, no uneven ground, and definitely no exercises that involve bending the joint. Basically, the goal is minimal stress and movement, but I still have to do certain exercises just so my muscles don't atrophy from total inactivity. It’s a fine line. I can handle light walks and low-impact stuff, but sitting around all day isn't an option either. Honestly, the hardest part is that I can't ride my bike right now, and that was always my favorite thing to do.😢 Still, I say thank God I can at least walk. There are plenty of people facing much worse than this.

Noah Brown86, that’s exactly why I’m telling you to get your daughter to as many specialists and follow-up appointments as possible. You need to hear multiple expert opinions on this.

I'll be 22 in three months. I was born with bilateral hip dysplasia, but the "experts" didn't catch it until I was a year and a half old. It was actually pure luck—a neighbor's pediatrician happened to run into me and my mom during a walk and noticed I wasn't walking right. That’s when they finally diagnosed the dislocation. Over the next 18 months, I had to undergo four different surgeries. But the damage was done. First off, I had limited external hip rotation, which meant I had to sit out of a lot of PE classes back in school. On top of that, I always walked a bit weirdly; people used to ask me why I limped. Then, just two years ago, I started feeling pain in my right knee. It only flared up when I bent it a certain way, stood awkwardly, or pivoted on my hips without moving my feet. This went on for about six months. Eventually, after pushing myself too hard while walking for a few days and dealing with massive swelling, I finally saw an orthopedic surgeon. He found that my left leg is 14mm shorter than my right, my knee joints are narrow, and there's mild arthritis. He gave me orthopedic inserts to lift my left side. For the next year, I just kept going back for routine checkups, but he’d just repeat the same thing every single time and prescribe expensive medications (he's in private practice). After an entire year of zero results or improvement, I decided to go to a doctor at a major hospital, and I've been seeing him for five months now. On my first day, he took me for an ultrasound and found a cyst on the inside of my knee, not the outside. He sent me to get a mass of other tests done that weren't even directly related to my knee. A month later at my follow-up, the cyst had receded, and I've been repeating all those tests every month since. Thanks to this surgeon—who is genuinely a great guy—I also started physical therapy, which significantly reduced the knee pain. He even sent me to an ENT specialist and then to an oral surgeon to fix some minor cavities before circling back to the knee results. My orthopedist referred me to all of them because he wants to look at the whole body for preventative reasons; he wants to find the root cause. That’s what I call a real doctor—someone who actually commits to you instead of just running through a routine. Oh, and he even offered to do plastic surgery on the scars left over from my hip surgeries twenty years ago. They stretched as I grew; they're pale now, but still ugly. In a month or two, he's also going to perform surgery on the muscles that limit my internal hip rotation—those tight spots in my inner groin that look more like tendons or veins because they pull so hard when I spread my legs. He wants to "snip" or stretch them surgically so I don't run into issues during childbirth or when spreading my legs. My main point in writing this is that you need to deal with anything immediately. Always demand a thorough exam if the doctor isn't willing to do it themselves.
Good luck to you! 🙂 🙂 👍

First off, regarding what happens if I don't step on the same color every single time; I feel this sense of loss, like I missed out. But I never stop watching my step just to make sure I don't slip up. Though, honestly, sometimes I go out of my way to mess up those little things on purpose. I try not to be obsessive about it. I can handle it, I can pull it off without breaking a sweat, it's just that I get a much more complete feeling when I actually do what I feel I have to do. And when I really think about it, when I intentionally bypass those "perfectionist rules," I'm actually trying to prove to myself that I’m just like everyone else: "normal," unlabeled. I'm proving that I *can* do it, but still—why bother if there's no necessity? See, even this happens to me constantly in my own head; I'll make a claim in the first sentence, then immediately contradict it in the second.
It's the same deal with perfectionism when it comes to cleaning the house. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, has to be in its place, always tidy. A while back, I was watching The Oprah Winfrey Show and saw that this is actually a consequence—a result of internal chaos, an unorganized emotional or spiritual state. This obsessive tidiness has been part of me forever. Not too long ago (back when I met the guy I started dating shortly after, and we're still together today), that order in the house started getting disrupted by how good my internal state had become. I realized that ever since I've been with him—since I became genuinely happy—I haven't paid nearly as much attention to cleaning. I'm not saying it vanished completely; it hasn't even diminished significantly, but it's noticeable. My mother, who never truly knew me and doesn't like my boyfriend one bit, defined this drop in my cleaning obsession as a lack of time. She didn't say it out loud, but her eyes said it all: she clearly thinks he's the reason I "don't have time." Anyway, now when I feel the urge to clean (and I really do feel the need to clean 🙄), I pay close attention to my headspace, how I'm feeling, and what's going on in my life. I always find a connection.

Look, I wasn't exactly itching to slog through thirty pages of reading either, but I figured I’d use this as an excuse to brag (!) about my OCD. Honestly, most of it is just trivial nonsense, but it adds up and impacts the big picture. Everything has to be in its exact, rightful place. If there are items on my desk, they have to be perfectly symmetrical. I find myself double-checking if I locked the front door over and over again, even when I know for a fact that I did. It's constant, pointless checking. And don't even get me started on those black and white tiles in the middle of downtown—I can't walk past them without making sure I step on the colors an equal number of times with both feet. Or if I accidentally touch something with one hand, I feel compelled to touch it with the other. My CDs have to be alphabetized, period. That's just what popped into my head, but if I actually sat down to list them all, there would be a million more. What am I supposed to say at the end of this? Nothing. I'm not looking for help. I don't feel like I need it. This is just who I am, and it has been since forever. This is ME. I actually love being obsessive over these little things because these quirks belong to me and nobody else. 🙂