Circus poodle

Over the past month, progress on my hamstring issue has been minimal while I worked to sort out a few billing issues with my health insurance (again). I'm not going to lie, a few weeks were also spent vacationing and trying to forget about it all. But this week I got the results of my third MRI and met up with "Orthopedist #3" again to go over them.

Basically, I got a call yesterday from my Doctor's office saying the results were in and that I needed to make an appt. immediately. All they told me was that they had found a "small tear" and I needed to discuss it with the Doc. Since this past MRI was a (painful) arthrogram, the focus was more on my hip/hip joint rather than the hamstring muscles. So when I got this call, all I could think was, finally a diagnosis!

Before my appt this afternoon I couldn't hold myself back from googling away to try and find runners with similar symptoms who were also found to have a labral tear. Just in doing a simple search, "hip labral tear and hamstring pain", I found Tim here who seems to have similar symptoms as me (sans the catching/clicking in the hip). Although thoroughly depressing, I felt somewhat relieved to finally know what was causing this pain. So, it seemed to me (at this point/earlier today), all I had to do was go speak with my Doctor about what I should do next.



However things took an unforeseen twist when I got to my Doctor's office. He showed me the films and confirmed the small tear in my labrum cartilage, but then explained to me how the symptoms for a typical hip labral tear really do not include hamstring pain. Considering that I do not seem to have the normal symptoms for this type of injury, he was concerned that this was not what was bothering me. He explained further that he "treats patients and not MRI films".
He mentioned that I could be experiencing displaced pain, but that basically "he really does not know". He confirmed that the tear will not heal on it's own and "could" get worse (yes, "COULD"). He also said that he could operate, but since my symptoms are "displaced", there is no guarantee that surgery would help the pain I'm experiencing.

So, what he suggested was sending me to a Physical Therapist for another evaluation and strength test. He said that after "his PT" evaluates me he will have a better idea of how to proceed. Well, damn-it if this news didn't make me well up with tears... again. I'm so fucking sick of this (sorry to cuss)! I'm in pain most days of my life and have cut my running back to a pathetic amount. If my hamstring looks fine but I have a tear in my labrum.. well, let's just get on with things. Let's just fix it if it won't fix itself. I'm so tired of whining about this and I just want to get out there and run, but I don't want things to get worse and I'm frustrated by the worsening pain and my inablity to run as fast and as strong as I know I can. I'm losing fitness and friends. ha! okay, maybe the last part was an exageration, but my friends are all out there running. I watch race after race go by.. and it plain out stinks!

But I guess I have no choice but to keep jumping through hoops until I find an answer.