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@freedom78 : Having one leg longer than the other after hip or knee replacement surgery is not that uncommon. A friend had a quite significant length difference after hip replacement and has to have her shoes customized with a thicker sole on the shorter leg. And I myself had about 1/2” difference after knee replacement, which threw my gait out of whack, and irritated my already existing Sciatica. I am wearing custom orthotic inserts, which have solved the problem. I wanted to point out that many people have different leg lengths even without any surgeries being involved, and don’t even notice. Might possibly have been the case with me. However, it seems that in the aftermath of a major joint surgery this issue becomes really, really, noticeable. Perhaps your MIL should take this up with her PT person also, since they are very much in the know, and my PT guy was the one to get wise to the length issue, after I had the hip pain etc. Good luck…..
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Let me add some thoughts….. as long as the actual surgery was successful, and the recovery and rehab is proceeding on schedule, tell the PT person about the leg length issue….. or at least, bring it up. The best thing my therapist ever did was to simply have me walk with casual strides, and loosely swinging arms, toward him (and a full length mirror). He immediately pointed out, plain for me to see, that the space between my swinging arms and hips was lop-sided. Wider on one side. Which means, the body is out of alignment. My details got taken care of, but to this day, whenever I have some odd twinges or aches I pay attention to where, exactly, my arms swing in relation to my body, on my daily morning walk. To me it is sort of a minor, self-adjusting mini-PT session. It really does help to focus on posture and gait.