Hip fracture leads to tumor discovery

Jay FitzOur Town Health, West Knoxville

Deborah Bunner had no plans for a hip replacement. Believing she suffered from arthritis, she endured signifi­cant pain in her hip for four years. “It was ex­cruciating. I know now that I was foolish for not going to a specialist sooner.”

Last autumn, the retired kin­dergarten teacher consult­ed her physician and had an MRI. The test revealed a large mass in her uterus. Bunner underwent a hysterectomy in December 2019. She thought that per­haps it was the mass in her uterus that had caused her hip pain, and now it would cease. She was wrong.

Just three months later, the hip pain had progressed. Bunner walked with two canes. While she was hanging clothes in her closet, one of the canes slipped and she took a tumble onto the hardwood floor, causing her left hip to fracture on impact. An ambulance brought her to Parkwest Medical Center.

“That is when I met Dr. Hamilton – he was the surgeon on call that day,” she remembers. He looked at my scans and told me the fracture revealed a sarcoma tumor in my hip. “Had I not fallen and fractured my hip, we would not have found it. The tumor was not vis­ible in scans before because it was inside, sitting there like an egg.” To learn what happened next, read details here: Covenant Health news 0813-3149 8-12-20 Deborah Bunner

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