Growing up in Dallas, Texas, Raenah was always very active. She played competitive soccer, tennis, and basketball. After her family moved to Bend, she discovered hiking and biking, and also played water polo. When she was 15, she was walking down the stairs, and tripped and fell. She felt a pinch and her hip jammed. When she sat up, she felt an immediate sharp pain. She found out later that her labrum tore and her hip was impinged on both her pelvis and hip bone. The fall had completely destroyed her hip joint so it was rubbing bone on bone. She went from playing sports to being completely bedridden. The first doctor she saw said it was something that Bend just couldn’t handle. Her family traveled all over the Northwest seeing hip specialists trying to find a solution, going back and forth to Shriners, OHSU, and even Boise, Idaho. She couldn’t do anything and was on crutches for nine months while her family tried to figure it out. All of the doctors said she needed to get her hip replaced, but wouldn’t do the procedure because of her age.
Raenah planned to graduate early from high school at the end of that year, but had to miss an entire year of school. It was really tough to be home that whole time and hard for her to see how difficult this was for her siblings and parents to watch her go through that.
One day her pediatrician called her mom and told her that she had heard of a new pediatric orthopedic specialist coming to Bend. She was pretty skeptical at that point, but went to see Dr. Roth. His first reaction was actually very positive. After some tests, he felt confident that he could help me with a hip preservation surgery and she was scheduled for surgery within three months. She was so relieved that she didn’t have to do a full hip replacement. Her family put all of their trust in him. She didn’t know it was a procedure that they had never done before at St. Charles until the day of her surgery, but she wasn’t worried and felt like she received the best care. “I feel so fortunate. Dr. Roth and my entire care team were amazing. It was a long recovery. The first few weeks were really hard, especially since we wouldn’t know if it really worked until my four-week appointment. When we got the x-rays back, it was such a huge relief. I am so grateful and now I am getting back to everything I can — swimming, biking, walking, and playing with my siblings. I haven’t been able to get back to sports yet, but I will figure out a way to get back to it!”
