Being Injured Is For Suckers

Hey remember that time that I ran a half marathon while slightly injured and ended up a whole lot more injured and then went away on a vacation for 2.5 weeks so that I couldn’t get physio done for said injury and also walked all the kilometers on said injury? Apparently none of that was a good idea.

Once I got back from said vacation, I decided to book a physio appointment at a place that specializes in sports medicine, but I couldn’t get in until last Thursday. So last Thursday, I hobbled my way into the clinic and she did a whole bunch of assessments and found that in addition to my bursitis, I have a bit of impingement on my hip, probably because my muscles are all messed up from having such a bad limp for the past month and a half. Also, my muscles are all messed up from having such a bad limp for the past month and a half.

Treatment she gave me included stretching my quads (& other muscles in that general vicinity), deep tissue massaging them, stabbing them with needles1, ultrasounding my bursa, and making me sit in a cold bath for 10 mins. Have you ever sat in what looks like a hot tub, but the water is 10 degrees C? I highly don’t recommend it.

For home treatment she suggested icing my hip, heating/stretching/foam rolling the tight muscles, and getting a cane to stop me from limping. Limping is making things worse, so she figures that if I can stop limping, it will help. Or at least preventing me from doing further damage. So for the next little while, if you see me, instead of just hobbling around, I’ll be hobbling around looking like an old person, or possibly a pimp.

I picked up a cane on my way to work on Friday, and it was quite interesting because when I was just limping, a lot of people were either teasing me (good naturedly, of course) or making comments of concern2, but when I showed up with a cane, almost no one said anything about it. Two people did ask me “what’s the deal with the cane?”, but most people just stayed completely silent. I’m assuming it’s because having a cane makes it seem like it’s in the range of a disability than an injury, and people are very uncomfortable with disabilities. You can tease someone for an injury, but you can’t tease them for a disability.

Having the cane has also caused people to give me their seat on the Skytrain or the bus every time I’ve gone on transit so far3. That might be the most helpful part of having a cane, as standing on transit has been murder on my injured hip as the bus or train jerks you around a lot more than I’d realized prior to being injured.

Anyway, I’m hoping that by following my physiotherapist’ treatment plan (I go back for another session of torture treatment this Thursday), l’ll be back to healthy soon. Hockey season has started and it’s killing me to be missing games!!

P.S. Blog postings about my Australia trip are coming. I’m using little bits of time here and there to get through processing all my photos, which I want to do before I write up blog postings so that I can have photos to go with them. I will get them done eventually!

P.P.S. I got an email today saying that the half marathon I’d registered (and paid for!) to run in San Diego in November but wasn’t going to be able to run because of my aforementioned injury has been cancelled due to not being able to get the permits they need to host the race. I feel badly for anyone who registered for and was training for (and maybe even booked a hotel and flight for!) the race, but the silver lining for me is that I get my money refunded!

  1. a.k.a. IMS []
  2. Like, “you are still limping??” []
  3. Unless there is already an empty seat for me. That didn’t even happen when I had my sprained ankle bandaged! []

Comments |1|

Re: Jan KarlsbjergCancel

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  • GET BETTER! (Statistically this will work: I’ve said this to many people, and all have subsequently gotten better. Nifty, eh?)

    Reply

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