Background

My name is Evet DeCota. I was born in 1969 with a genetic bone disease called Osteogenesis Imperfecta aka brittle bone disease or OI. This disease has many stages to it and I have one where I am missing partial or full amounts of collagen production in my bones, tendons, discs and connective tissue. In my family it is a hereditary disease passed down from my fathers DNA. I have a mild case of it, stage 1A1 compared to other stages. I was born with two broken arms and a broken nose and I have broken many bones throughout my life. Even with this disease I led a pretty normal life and had I not been such a tomboy when I was younger, I probably wouldn’t have had so many breaks.

When I was younger I would break a bone, heal and carry on. In the last decade I have started shattering bones and my recovery has not been 100%-leaving a bad limp or not being able to lift my arm fully from a shattered ball of my shoulder. In 2011 I had an accident at a gym fracturing and shattering multiple bones in my right lower leg and compressing vertebrae in my lower back. This accident put me in a wheelchair for 3 months and then I was subjected to an inexperienced Physical Therapist that put me back in a wheelchair for a month. My hips were effected by the sedentary time in a wheelchair and became arthritic and made it difficult to stand, walk and sit. This is a real problem because my career is in hairstyling and makeup. I had three consultations with Orthopedic Surgeons over a five year period and not one of them would do a hip replacement. The last consult I had, the surgeon informed me that I would eventually be in a wheelchair. Fast forward to 2019, where my niece, who has the same bone disease, needed and received a hip replacement at UCSF. She had no complications and recovered quickly and perfectly. This gave me hope and with the help of my GP, I was guided to an Orthopedic Surgeon at San Francisco Kaiser, who had successfully performed hip replacements on people with OI and studied his fellowship under the doctor that did my niece’s hip replacement. After numerous test to make sure I was ready for surgery I scheduled the hip replacement for January 2020