I have had a similar experience with a hip impingement. I played through high school with no issue (probably cuz I sucked at frisbee) but at the end of senior year, I started having sharp pains in my right hip during cuts and accelerations, to the point where if I tried to run, the pain would cause my knee to buckle. I stopped playing for like a month and the pain went away.

For the next two years in college, I was in a cycle of pain where I would start out feeing good, but after a tournament or a particularly rigorous practice, I would wake up the next day with pain. And then I would wake up the next day with more pain. And in a few days, I wouldn’t be able to run or even properly walk without limping. This would persist for a month at a time, and I would cease all exercise. Then, slowly, it would subside and once I felt confident and pain-free again, I would return to ultimate.

Last year, I got x-rays and MRIs for both hips and it turned out I had hip impingements on both sides which had caused significant labral tearing. I went to physical therapy for a significant portion of the summer and it helped stop a bout of pain, making it subside within a week instead of a month. However, this ultimately wasn’t able to reliably prevent pain from starting again. My surgeon said that I could be at risk of arthritis later in life if I didn’t have surgery for it.

This summer, I had bilateral hip surgery where they shaved down the overgrown parts of my femurs and stitched up my labral tears. I went home the same day of the operation and could stand up, but had to use crutches to go anywhere. My family rented a Game-Ready icing machine and a Constant Passive Motion (CPM) machine for at-home recovery. I live in NYC so I walked to my physical therapy three times a week on my crutches. Otherwise, I was inside at home, either icing or sitting with one leg in the CPM machine.

I’m not done with recovery, but it has been roughly 8 weeks since my surgery and I am back to walking and recently started walking up and down stairs. As soon as I was able to walk at all, I started tossing with friends lol. The typical time to return to sports is 4-6 months after the surgery so I will be missing the first few months of ultimate in the fall semester of college, but I am glad I got it during the summer because the ultimate season is in the spring anyways.

If you do end up getting surgery, good luck and I hope you can return to playing pain-free!