Managing Hip Bursitis Pain

Thanks @trimomlewis, I'm glad you are feeling better. Motrin and ice are a great combination, and not habit forming!

I spin about 5-6x/week. I have a 40 minute HIIT routine I like. Keeps my CV system in shape.

I had my left shoulder replaced last August and followed a rehab plan similar to what you describe. First, I spent one month with a PT to re-establish range of motion, flexibility. After that, we started working on strength, very slowly. I'm almost 6 months post-op now and feeling great. Recovery from all joint replacement surgeries, especially the shoulder, is a marathon, not a sprint. The best thing to have is patience for the process. It works.

I recently started seeing a therapist twice/month for dry needling (DN)/cupping, especially for my lower back and glutes, hamstrings, and upper back. DN works well for me. But by itself it's not enough. My therapist has shown me strengthening/stretching exercises I can do to complement and extend the effects of DN.

Not everyone is suited for DN. Fear of neddles is pretty much a non-starter. Although the needles are approx the width of a human hair. I mostly feel when the muscle "twitches" - more like a cramp - and then releases. Once in a while, it feels like a needle and hurts, but that's just part of the process.

Joe

Nurses at Kaiser when responding on emergency line for pain ,advise tell patients to take two ibuprofen and one Tylenol. The two different pils act in sync to relieve pain.

@ranch
Is that radio frequency nerve block?

@heyjoe415
Unfortunately all prescribed meds make you tired.. you might as well stay in bed all day. I can’t take them. Very upsetting.

I have a small bout of bursitis. Can feel it once in awhile, but it doesn't affect my sleep or much of anything else. I just swallow methylcobalamin. Does putting it under the tongue get it to its action site quicker?

I am in physical therapy for my lower back and left hip. I do the exercises at home, and it seems to help a little. I will try heat pads. The pain is really bad in the mornings. I don't really like taking pain medication, because it upsets my stomach. I pray a lot and hope for relief.

How many here have considered a "bursectomy" as a last resort?

@pwcook1 When I get a flare of bursitis in my hip, my treatment of choice, recommended by both the orthopedist and physical therapist, is ICE, not heat. The PT explained that while heat may feel soothing, ice is more therapeutic because it actually relieves the inflammation.

Lidocaine patches or topical Voltaren gel help me when it gets really bad, especially on days when I have to keep moving

Hi, I just found this group. (I am part of the kidney group.) I have been having discussions the a Facebook bursitis group for about four years. I was diagnosed with bursitis in 2022 by a Pain Management Specialist who used physical examination coupled with x-rays. I learned from the FB group that the optimal imaging for "seeing" bursitis is MRI but because I had an incompatible implant, that was not possible. That specialist recommended cortisone shots into the bursa because the only analgesic my nephrologist permits is tylenol which you will not be surprised to hear did nothing for my pain. So I let him do a cortisone injection into the bursa of my more painful leg. It was a miracle that lasted a few months. I then had the shots into both legs. Again, the miracle occurred.

But the third round was a complete failure. I then went to see an orthopedist who took new x-rays. The radiologist wrote that both of my hips had advanced osteoarthritis (the report accompanying the earlier x-rays had characterized it as mild OA). Total bilateral hip replacement was recommended. It's hard to say how effective the first surgery was because at PT on Day 5 after surgery, my femur cracked. As I recall the post-surgery pain up to that point was not the same as I had been having before surgery. Unfortunately, a gate keeper nurse on the orthopedist's "team" would only offer that opinion (without seeing me), via messages on the patient portal, that I was not carrying out the self care the brochure I had been given outlined. Of course that was not true but after two attempts to convince that nurse otherwise, I just put up and shut up.

At the six week post-op appt with the orthopedist (that I went to on crutches), new x-rays were taken which said show that I had suffered a cracked femur which was now healing. (I googled "cracked femur after hip replacement" but apparently I am a unique case. The only "hits" I got were medical journal articles outlining cases of broken femurs decades after hip replacement.)

I am not sure what possessed me. I should have settled for this outcome. But I decided to have the second hip replacement when the orthopedist described how the crack could be prevented by wrapping the femur with titanium wire. Fortunately, that worked.

Unfortunately, I continued to have so much pain that the PT's sent me home to recover more before attempting the exercises they wanted to teach me. That went on for a year. I had so much regret.

But then in Oct 2025 (over a year after the second hip replacement), I had what I thought might be my second gout flare in the same or neighboring toe as the first one in 2022. I had a bottle of colchicine, the gout specific analgesic, so I took a dose. I figured that if the pain diminished, I was right. If it didn't, I see my "gout" doctor (a nephrologist because rheumatology didn't believe I had gout since only uric acid was high, I had a sore, red, swollen toe for 3 months that was not broken. Rheumatology wanted a tophus to test. I didn't have one so no appt could be made.)

The best part of taking a trial dose of colchicine was not the total toe pain relief but that within a few hours, my hip pain VANISHED! So I have gout in my pelvis. A Dual Scan CT showed I also have pseudogout (aka chondrocalcinosis) in my pelvis. And as an amazing coincidence, pseudogout pain is one of three conditions that colchicine helps with pain relief. The other is Familial Mediterranean Fever which as a person of Japanese descent seemed unlikely to be my problem.

So 18 months after my first hip replacement, I made the PT appointment to learn the exercises I should do to recover. Two months later, for the first time in 5+ years, I was able to walk three miles on a mostly flat trail.

My conclusion is that hip pain is hard to diagnose. I hope you have faster results that I did. Next week is a planned trial of bike riding. I haven't been able to dismount alone since 2019. Hopeful.

I almost forgot. The orthopedist told me no more bursa cortisone shots. He reported seeing "too many" torn tendons in patients who had "too many" of those shots.

Thanks Sue. And your comment on using ice rather than heat is spot on.

Most people think heat is better, and that's probably because it feels good immediately. It also causes blood to rush to the affected area, and that only makes inflammation worse.

So yes, cold/ice is always the best option for temporary pain/inflammation relief.

Joe