Choosing Your Doctor and Physical Therapist

I went through three doctors and two PT Clinics. 

Doctor 1
Was recommended by a friend, who had recently had a hip resurfacing, and swore by him.  In a great deal of pain, I made an appointment.  A week later, I headed to the doctor's office for an initial consulation.  In spite of his not advanced age, he was making a name for himself in the hip world.  He wanted MRIs run and gave me a phone number to schedule the tests and a follow-up appointment.  Long story short, he told me I had a degenerative hip condition and that I should not hesitate to take care of it.  I was not overwhelmed by this doctor as he left me in a treatment room for over 2 hours and then chastized me for being impatient.  He did, subsequently apologize, and did recommend me to . . .

Doctor 2
Or as I like to call him, 'The One'.  He too was making strides in the hip world, he was developing new methods to make arthroscopic surgery as uninvasive as possible.  It was with him I went through three years of cortisone shots until we both reached the conclusion that we couldn't keep doing it.  But, just to be safe, I felt I needed to consult with just one more who was at the top of their game and the doctor of a friend who had undergone a hip replacement.  And, so, I made an appointment with . . .

Doctor 3 
He wrote the book on it.  The 'should I, shouldn't I' handbook and guide on hip healing.  Not only had I read the book, I had practiced all of the pool therapy exercises in the book for the last three months.  He reviewed all of Doctor 1 & 2 notes, x-rays, MRIs.  He very cooly stated that, in his opinion, he would not recommend surgery based on my dysplasia.  That he would only take on a situation like mine, if, and only if, there were labral tears.  So, he sent me to . . .

Physical Therapist 2 
What happened, to Physical Therapist 1, we'll save them for last.  PT 2 helped Doctor 3 write the pool therapy portion of his book.  So exciting - I get to work with the person who developed the very exercises I had been practicing.  I will say, that the few times I went, I felt a marked difference.  Why did I stop going?  When Doctor 3 told me they were disorganized and that they would try to pawn me off on the less trained PTs, I should have been a bit suspect.  Not only was that true, but the PTs were training two people at a time, different fitness levels and . . .  different sides of the pool? how do you do that effectively?

Physical Therapist 1
My go to guy who worked on my shoulder.  They do stim, massage and ice.  They don't have a pool with a deep end, which makes doing the exercises from PT2, virtually impossible.  They were ruled out because of this.

The Final Decision
The more I did therapy and felt that stabbing pain in my groin, the more I realized my anatomy was not likely going to change no matter how much PT I did.  Most likely, I would just make it worse.  And then there was that nagging comment that Doctor 2 made.  He said that he would only perform surgery if there were labral tears, otherwise, I'd be trading one problem for another - hip instability due to my dysplasia.  The notes clearly indicated that there was a high probability of labral tears and the dysplasia was mild to moderate.  It all pointed me back to my only option.  Surgery.