road to recovery, paved with doubt and detours

Thursday was rough.

[I have a muscle spasm in my abdomen- on my stabilizing ab muscle (transverse abdominus)- which doing anything but lying down aggravates the muscle]

So, Thursday- I started writing this long woe is me, my life sucks, I’m in pain, etc. post. But, I figured I’d wait til I saw the doctor Friday to post anything…

Flash forward to the doctor visit– She consulted with the head doctor regarding my injury. I always get these rare injuries, which are hard to diagnose. Like my hip- in 2011- it wasn’t a muscle tear, or a fractured femoral neck, or even ITBS (IlioTibial Band Syndrome). Nope, my hip was tilted out of line. Who gets that? I do!

So my doctor consulted with the head physician, who advised her to think of horses, not zebras. Any time you have abdominal pain, they have to check for everything… Like EVERY-FREAKING-thing. She decided it was likely musculoskeletal, since the muscle relaxers seem to be helping. But she also mentioned that if it didn’t go away, to call her; they would test my liver function and my spleen, as those organs are in the area which I describe the pain.

She told me to continue to take my muscle relaxers as I have been, and to take the ibuprofen (I stopped taking it on Monday- it messes up your stomach lining unless you take it DURING a meal, and I kept forgetting while I was eating). She also told me to run.

Say what, miss thang?!

I know, that was my reaction too!

You want me to do the one thing guaranteed to make it hurt? I don’t know…

She must have picked up on my hesitation, because she then went from “Maybe a long run?” to “a long walk with some running as a test”… I could agree to that, knowing I had plenty of the trusty muscle relaxers if that sharp, shooting pain came back

So, yesterday I ran. I won’t lie. I was not looking forward to it. I was really afraid my muscle will act up, and I would end up doubled over in pain all weekend long. But, I think her logic is that I’m not going to stop running completely. If we believe it happens during a run, then I need to test that hypothesis.

So I walked 0.5 miles to my gym, and then ran a mile on the treadmill. I started out slow- 9:41 pace, as I was nervous. I got settled into that pace and started hitting the front of the treadmill, so I kicked it up a little. Until I was at 8:49, which felt comfortable. With 0.3 miles left, I wanted to push it and see how it felt. I got up to a 7:00 pace (8.5 mph). And then dropped to a walk. That mile was 9:17 which is my steady easy pace, so that was encouraging.

After walking for 5 minutes, I decide to run an additional 0.5 miles (at a 8:00 pace). I started to feel sore in my stomach, so I hopped off, calling it successful and walked back to my apartment.

My stomach was a little sore when I woke up this morning, but my doctor encouraged me to keep ‘moving’ when I could. So I went for a 2 mile walk. And am now laid up on my couch again.

It may take a while to get back up in the mileage, but I can run again (a mile is better than 0), which means I’m officially on my road to recovery.

Yay! Tiny celebration for a tiny step 🙂