Maureen Fastie, 37, loves boating, fishing, and crabbing in the Chesapeake Bay. Drawn to an adventurous lifestyle, she spends her time traveling with her husband.
When recurrent pain began to limit her abilities, she knew something was wrong.
“At first, it felt like lower back pain that wouldn’t go away,” Maureen says. Over the course of 10 years, she saw many doctors and pursued various treatments for a misdiagnosis of herniated discs. “Because of my young age, I knew I wasn’t getting the attention I needed from the doctors,” she says.
While treasure hunting along the Southern Maryland shore in 2023, Maureen bent down to retrieve a piece of pottery, and a new level of pain shot through her, involving the hip region. She waited for the sensation to ease, but weeks passed with no relief.
“My husband and I go to a music festival every year, and I had the realization that I wasn’t going to be able to ride my bike there because of my pain,” she says. “It was a very sobering moment for me. I needed to find a doctor who would take my suffering seriously.”
Fortunately, William Postma, MD, chief of Sports Medicine at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, part of the MedStar Orthopaedic Institute, was recommended to Maureen by another orthopedic doctor in Baltimore.
The Institute has a long history of successfully treating complex conditions and sports-related injuries.
“When I met with Dr. Postma, I had to use a wheelchair and couldn’t walk,” says Maureen. “He was as alarmed about my pain as I was, and I knew immediately that he would be the one to help me heal.”
A hip and knee specialist focused on athletic injuries, Dr. Postma determined with imaging that Maureen had left hip femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) with a labral tear: the ball and socket of her hip joint were mismatched, causing a tear in the cartilage of her hip socket.
“With injuries like these, people have pain in the front hip, groin, outside portion of the hip, or more rarely, the buttock area, and struggle with activity, standing up, or sitting for long periods of time,” says Dr. Postma, who serves as head orthopedic surgeon for the Washington Wizards basketball team and for the Georgetown University Athletic Department. “Maureen had a more severe presentation of this injury, which significantly affected her hip function.”
Two weeks after Maureen’s initial appointment, Dr. Postma performed a hip arthroscopy to repair the tear. Employing a minimally invasive approach that uses smaller incisions to minimize scarring and enable faster recovery, the procedure involved entering her hip joint with a camera to assist in repairing the injury and reshaping the hip.
The surgery lasted about an hour, and Maureen went home the same day. Her recovery included using crutches for two weeks and physical therapy.
Feeling happy and strong again, Maureen is looking forward to traveling again—and being able to ride her bike to the music festival this year.
Take our free joint risk assessment at MedStarHealth.org/HipHRA to find out if you are at risk for developing hip issues.
MedStar Georgetown University Hospital is part of our MedStar Orthopaedic Institute, with 50 orthopedic surgeons at 19 locations throughout Washington, D.C.; Maryland; and Virginia. Visit MedStarOrthopaedicInstitute.org for a complete listing of physicians and locations.
Visit MedStarHealth.org/MGUHOrtho, or to make an appointment with one of our orthopedic specialists, call 202-444-8766.