Sounds like youre doing great Thomas, that’s great.
I’m 19 weeks post anterior thr and I was on the same track as you until week 11.
I did the first 6 weeks of home PT and after that felt I didn’t need any more, same as you. In recent weeks I’ve learned that continuing pt might have prevented a problem.
At week 11 I was feeling nearly healed so I got out on one of my newly vacated rental properties to do some tree pruning and other yard cleanup.
I apparently over did it even though I was was being careful on the new hip.
A day or two later I began having increasingly severe pain from my rear side, all around the new hip and down to the knee. I mean the pain became nearly unbearable at times. Every few seconds 24 hrs a day id get sharp stabbing pains all through that area. The stabs so sudden and severe it would cause my body to bolt and It was difficult to prevent verbalizing it, “OUCH!” And often more colorful language followed.
Then the constant burning pains made it feel as if I had a mean little gremlin in my hip with an ice pick in one hand and a blow torch in the other and he was trying to stab snd burn his way outta there.
My surgeon did xrays each time I returned for help and assured me the prostheses were in their proper place and my problem was bursitis and that it might resolve in time. He put me on steroids and ibuprofen 800 and it eased up maybe 25% for a few days, then the angry gremlin went back at it.
I saw another highly respected hip surgeon who did xrays and said all looks good but that I had tendinitis.
He recommended more PT. I asked if ge coukd do an MRI to see exactly were an injury might be and he laughed. He sais I can never have an MRI done in the hip area because the prosthetic implants reflect the imaging back so bright that nothing can be seen. It’s like looking directly at the sun, he said.
He also showed me what I had felt, that my leg with the new hip is now very slightly longer than before surgery, by about 1/4 inch or so.
He explained that because I had Avascular Necrosis (AVN) in the hip, the ball at the femural head had begun to slowly cave in, my muscles around the hip were slowly tightening up becomming shorter in direct correlation with the hip slowly caving in.
Now that they’ve put in a new hip the hip is now back where it was when I was a healthy 30 year old, which pushes the leg making it appear about 1/4 inch longer. With this extension, all those muscles and tendons and a long thing that stretches from buttock to knee called the iliotopial band (spell?) were now much tighter around the hip because of the new length of my leg.
There it was, finally explained to me much better than I just did. These tightened tissues are more susceptible to injury until they stretch back to the proper length to match the longer leg.
Working with a chain saw that day likely caused some friction of the femur against the muscles and that ilitopial band. Once injured it takes months to heal because there is very little blood flow to that band to speed healing.
At PT they work at stretching those that band and surrounding muscles in several ways to try to lengthen them to reduce further friction caused from them being over tightened around the new hip joint.
I hope that makes sense somehow. lol
Now at week 19 those pains so far are reduced by 50%. The gremlin is slowly wearing himself out in there I hope.
If you feel the outside of your leg midway from hip to knee, and compare the tightness you feel to your other leg, you’ll likely feel a big difference in the tightness. It’s mostly from that iliotobial band, called a band because it’s not a muscle, tendon or ligament so they call it a band.
And it’s my least favorite band now.
So, that’s one argument for continuing PT.
Best of luck,