The Chicago Marathon is this weekend, and if I didn't have this hip injury, I'd be hopping on a plane tomorrow morning ready to run my first post-grad school marathon.

But as we all know, that's not the case. I'm a little bit bummed, but I'm trying not to let it bug me too much every time I see a fun picture on Instagram of people traveling there for the race. It's just one race, in one year. I don't really think the Chicago marathon is going anywhere, so there will be other opportunities for me to run it.

Plus, I'm trying to focus on a little bit of good news on the hip front.

I had a follow-up appointment with my doctor on Monday, where we reviewed the results of my arthrogram and did some additional tests.



As of right now, my doctor isn't convinced I have a torn labrum, and he doesn't think I should have surgery.

It's strange because the arthrogram showed that I might have a torn labrum, but when my doctor was doing some other tests on my leg, I "passed" all of them for a torn labrum -- meaning none of the motions that typically indicate a torn labrum caused me any pain -- and big time failed one for bursitis.

Given this and the fact that my first cortisone shot seems to be helping a little bit, my doctor doesn't want to send me for surgery only to have them get in there and realize my labrum is not in fact torn and that something else was causing the problem.

So for now, we're treating that bursitis issue. I got another cortisone injection into that part of my hip on Monday (which made it pretty uncomfortable to sit down the rest of the day) and as of right now, my entire left hip feels pretty amazing.

I'm allowed to try to run again and see how it goes, and then I go back for a follow-up appointment in a couple of weeks to see where things stand.

I am hugely relieved that right now surgery isn't on the table. I think subconsciously knowing that might be an option was really freaking me out.

I'm still a little frustrated that we don't have a real answer yet on what the root cause of all this pain has been, but with the pain relief I'm getting from the cortisone, I'm more positive about this whole thing than I have been in a long time.

I know if something is truly torn cortisone won't be a long-term fix, but if my pain was all stemming from insane amounts of inflammation, I'm hoping the cortisone can at least wipe that out, and I can assess where things actually are. Then maybe we'll be able to figure out what's actually going on. I'm cautiously optimistic.