Zemicka’s journey across Texas: Finding the right care for her hip

For most 18-year-olds, graduating high school marks the beginning of a new chapter, a chance to leave the old behind and step into whatever comes next. For Zemicka, that moment arrived with something she couldn't pack away with the rest of her high school era: years of Dolor de cadera.

Zemicka learned to push through the discomfort from a hip labral tear. An active participant in athletics most of her life, the ache in her hip had become a familiar feeling over the years that flared with activity, made sitting too long uncomfortable and quietly chipped away at what being 18 should feel like.

She had been patient in ways most teenagers never have to be, having tried injections and physical therapy, but neither brought the relief she was hoping for. When Zemicka looked to the orthopedic community in her hometown of Lubbock, Texas, for possible surgical options, she kept running into the same problem: the procedure she needed to fix her hip wasn't something most surgeons in her area regularly performed.

Zemicka wasn’t looking for a miracle. She was looking for a surgeon somewhere who could do what needed to be done.

“Is this how things are going to be?”

“The pain in my hip wasn't something I could just ignore anymore,” Zemicka said after learning she had a hip labral tear. “It was always there, and after a while I really started to wonder if this is just how things are going to be."

A hip labral tear can be easy to dismiss at first. The labrum is a ring of cartilage that lines the rim of the hip socket, helping keep the joint stable and absorbing the kind of stress that comes with everyday movement. When that cartilage is torn, the result can be a persistent, deep-seated pain in the hip or groin, a catching or locking sensation in the joint, and a stiffness that doesn't respond to rest the way you'd expect.

For a young person like Zemicka who is ready to start the next phase of her life, it's the kind of condition that needs more than physical therapy.

She knew that and her family knew that, but what they didn't know was how to find their way to someone who could actually fix it.

The long road to the operating table

Rural and semi-rural communities face a quiet but persistent gap in specialized surgical care. Not every hospital in a given region has every specialty. Not every surgeon who practices orthopedics performs every orthopedic procedure. And not every facility will accept every insurance plan. For Zemicka, all three of those realities stacked up at once.

When she realized that she wasn’t going to find the care she needed at home, Zemicka and her family were willing to travel elsewhere to find help with her condition. But they kept running into one challenge after another in their search for a partner in her care.

One hospital had an age threshold that worked against her. Another didn't have a surgeon who performed hip arthroscopy, the procedure she needed, with any regularity. A third didn't accept her insurance. One by one, the options that seemed within reach turned out to be closed doors.

A referral that changed everything

The path forward finally came through someone who knew Zemicka’s situation firsthand, a trusted athletic trainer who had watched her work through the pain and recognized that conservative care had taken her as far as it could.

That trainer pointed her toward Mohammad Umar Burney, MD, an orthopedic sports medicine surgeon on the medical staff at Baylor Scott & White Medical Center – Lake Pointe.

Dr. Burney is among a relatively small group of orthopedic surgeons who regularly perform hip arthroscopy, a minimally invasive approach that allows surgeons to access and repair the hip joint through small incisions rather than open surgery.

While many orthopedic surgeons perform total hip replacements and other common procedures, the technical demands of hip arthroscopy make it a subspecialty. Not every orthopedic program offers it, and not every surgeon who lists hip care on their resume performs it with regularity.

"Hip arthroscopy requires a very specific skill set," said Dr. Burney. "Labral tears in younger people, in particular, involve a careful, targeted repair, not just management. When someone comes to us at 18 years old with years of hip pain already behind them, we want to give them the best possible outcome so they can get back to living fully."

For Zemicka and her family, hearing that there was a surgeon willing and equipped to do exactly that was, in her own words, “a turning point.” But getting there would require navigating a set of obstacles that had nothing to do with medicine.

Making the search for care a reality

The care coordination team at Baylor Scott & White Medical Center – Lake Pointe stepped in to ensure the care that Zemicka was desperately searching for would become a reality.

The process took months. The team worked closely with Zemicka and her family to understand what coverage she had, what options were available to her and what changes might open new doors.

When it became clear that her existing insurance plan was a sticking point, the team helped walk her through the process of switching to a plan that would be accepted. They identified which plans would work, answered questions as they came up and stayed in contact throughout the waiting period so that nothing fell through the cracks.

“Once my new insurance coverage was in place, the team moved so quickly on my behalf,” Zemicka said. 

She finally got to meet Dr. Burney face-to-face, her surgery was scheduled and the process that had felt so impossible for so long finally had a finish line.

"What Zemicka went through to get here says a lot about her determination," Dr. Burney said. "But it also says something about the gaps that exist in access to specialized care. We see people travel significant distances because what they need isn't available where they live. That's a reality we take seriously, and it's why the coordination work that our team does matters so much."

Why the five-hour drive was worth it

Zemicka and her family were willing to repeatedly make the over five-hour drive from Lubbock to Baylor Scott & White Medical Center – Lake Pointe, not just because she had run out of other options, but also because she had finally found a team that treated her situation with the attention it deserved.

The months of back-and-forth, the insurance changes, the logistics of traveling for her surgical care...none of it was easy. But for a young woman who had spent years managing pain that shouldn't have been hers to manage alone, the destination made the journey worthwhile.

“Hip arthroscopy for a labral tear offers the opportunity for meaningful, lasting relief,” Dr. Burney said. “The goal isn't simply to quiet the pain but to restore the hip to the kind of function that lets a person move through life without bracing for the next flare-up. For someone as young as 18, that matters enormously.”

Zemicka’s surgery took place in febrero 2026, and almost three months after her hip labral tear was repaired, Zemicka is doing great. She’s back to her normal activities and, best of all, experiences no daily pain to push through.

"Living with that discomfort in my hip every day for years became my normal,” Zemicka said. “I didn't realize how much it was holding me back until it was finally gone."

Care is not one-size-fits-all

One of the things that often surprises people is that orthopedic care is not one-size-fits-all.

"We want every person who walks through our doors to feel like they are seen as an individual, not a case," Dr. Burney said. "Zemicka and her family navigated a genuinely complicated path to get here. Our job was to make sure that once she arrived, everything was handled with the same level of care and attention that her situation called for."

For people in communities where that level of subspecialty care isn't nearby, the instinct is sometimes to settle for what's available locally, or to treat the symptoms as a permanent part of life. Zemicka’s story is a reminder that neither of those has to be the answer.

“Our team has built relationships with athletic trainers, referring physicians and care teams across the region precisely because they understand that geography shouldn't determine the quality of care someone receives,” Dr. Burney said.

When a strong referral relationship connects the right person with the right specialist, and a dedicated coordination team makes the logistical and insurance hurdles manageable, people who might otherwise have gone without the care they needed can get exactly what they came for.

Zemicka has crossed a long stretch of Texas highway to get to where she is today, and she will tell you that she’s awfully glad she did.

Are you experiencing hip pain? Take our hip pain quiz to find out if you should see a doctor.