Personal Narrative: Wellspan Orthopedics

I have always heard the phrase that as one journey ends another one begins, but I never truly understood how accurate this phrase could be for me. The efforts to discover what was causing my pain was an ironically distressing journey of confusion, bafflement, and disappointment up until this appointment. I will forever remember WellSpan Orthopedics because it provided a reason for my hip pain that was just dismissed by others, but opened up a whole new realm of discovery about my health. On December 11, 2015, as I entered the doctor’s office, I was a ball of nerves. If I could not find a solution here to my hip pain, my career as a runner would have zero chance at recovery. The crisp cool air hit my skin sharply as I walked through the entrance.

I turned left as I entered the door into a room of the same white walls and grey carpet. I was directed towards the room I would be evaluated in. As I walked through the halls, the walls were littered with posters about the quality of WellSpan’s doctors, insurance, and many other frankly biased corporate ideals. After the maze of hallways, I entered a room on the left. The room was the only way to divert my attention from the impending mental spiral I expected to happen. My mother and I waited on the same uncomfortable chairs as we did in the waiting room. To the right was the maroon counter and overhead cabinets that had nothing but a generic laptop that was placed on it and a bright red hazardous waste bin. The yellow walls are distinctly memorable. The doctor I was seeing was the main physician of USA Weightlifting, so the wall directly across from myself was a framed white shirt with the black Sharpie signatures of the weightlifters surrounding the red and blue logo. On the other wall opposing the counter, a picture of the team with their physician was on the wall. As I waited in this room, I could not distract myself with the contents of the room for much

I had a condition called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome that caused hip capsulitis and an unrelated issue of iliopsoas bursitis. I had finally received closure about what was torturing me for the past two years. I was left with a sudden feeling of relief; I could finally return to the runner I once was, and the runner I wanted to be. However, because of the Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, I had to begin to go to several different appointments about my heart, for I even found out that I have a heart disease. The appointment with Dr. Lavallee has left a permanent memory of the WellSpan Orthopedic’s doctors office because it was the first glimmer of hope I had through the process of developing a diagnosis for my incomprehensible hip pain, for I will always have an intimate bond with the simultaneously cluttered yet simple doctor’s