Last Monday, I had my first dry needling appointment to help my hip.

Now if you have been reading for a while, you know needles make me pass out. So it's not really normal for me to voluntarily subject myself to them.

But with my hip hurting so much every time I did anything, I was willing to give dry needling a try.



Jenna, the woman who did the dry needling, was awesome. She explained what was going to happen and answered a couple of my questions, and then we got started.

The needles didn't hurt going in, but it felt so strange when she was hitting the trigger points and trying to release them.

I don't really know how to describe the sensation. The two she did in my butt just felt weird. Not bad or good, but I could kind of tell something was happening.

The one she stuck in my hip flexor was crazy. Again the needle didn't hurt going in, but when she it that trigger point, it felt so uncomfortable...but in a good way. Like when someone is giving you a massage and they hit the really tight part and start working the knot out. It's uncomfortable, but also feels good. That's the only way I can really think to describe the feeling.

I did get super light-headed when it was happening, but I never passed out.

I also wasn't sure what to expect afterward. I had strict instructions from Dan to not run, but to stretch a bunch in the days following. I did a lot of stretching, especially since I had to hop on an airplane the next day for a work trip.

In the last several days, my hip has felt the best it has in at least two months. Walking doesn't really seem to bother it anymore. Sitting in a car definitely still does, but I can tell overall it is so, so much looser.

I also feel much, much more positive about the fact that the MRI I have this week might not show a labrum tear. Two weeks ago, I was 100 percent convinced I was going to need surgery to fix this problem. Today I don't feel that way.

So that's where things stand now. I have my MRI this week, and I also have another dry needling appointment. I'll be doing my PT stretches and exercises in between, and then I guess we'll reassess and go from there.

I still don't know where things stand with the marathon. I don't want to completely write it off yet, but it's definitely not looking great as this all takes a while to figure out.

Ok so yesterday I really just needed to get out the feels about my hip. If you read that post you know I have a lot of them, and writing things down has always helped me process things and think more clearly.

In this post, I'm going to talk more about what the plan of attack is moving forward.

So after my intense flair up of pain earlier this week, I texted my PT and he agreed it was time to get an MRI to make sure we weren't looking at any sort of structural issues in my hip area.



He squeezed me in for a last-minute appointment Tuesday night so that he could write up a report and fax it to my primary care doctor so she could write a prescription for the MRI.

In true, wow the American healthcare system is ridiculous fashion, my doctor couldn't write a prescription for the MRI without seeing me in the office. Granted I really love my doctor, but it's frustrating to have to take time off work and pay for an appointment basically just to get the script for an MRI.

My doc asked some basic questions, did a short exam and agreed an MRI would be a good next step just to make sure things weren't funked up in my hip joint.

Now I need to wait for my insurance company to pre-approve the MRI (because of course there's another step), and then I will finally be able to get it scheduled.

Based on the evaluation my PT and another one of his colleagues did on Tuesday, they don't think the MRI will show any sort of structural damage. They put me through a bunch of tests for all different things, and I seemed to pass them pretty decently.



I have to say that was a huge relief on my part. I know we won't have an answer for real until after the MRI, but after being so concerned earlier in the week, it was nice to hear from more than one person they still think I'm largely dealing with some muscular problems.

My doc had a couple of potential other concerns that are also in the back of the mind of my PT as possibilities if this isn't muscular. They're a little scarier to me than a labrum tear, so I'm just filing those away for now and trying to focus on what we can actually control.

In the meantime, my PT wants to try some dry needling. Dan mentioned this as a potential option two weeks ago, and I initially balked for a moment because needles make me pass out.

But at this point, I'm willing to try anything that will get me back to running (and in general being pain free) again. So I have my first session scheduled for that next week.

Dry needling is not acupuncture, but it's a similar concept. My PT will stick super tiny needles (they promise they don't hurt...I still think I will pass out), into all the trigger points along my hip/hip flexor in an attempt to release them and as a result reduce my pain, improve my range of motion in the hip (which at this point is basically nonexistent) and help get me back on my feet again.

I'm basically crossing my fingers and toes that it will work. A muscle issue will be so much better to deal with than something structural like a labrum tear or some sort of hip impingement or anything else that would pretty much require surgery to fix.

I don't know what my chances of running the Chicago Marathon are. Right now I can't run at all. I haven't really run since April when I did an 8 and 6 miler in Vegas. Every time I think about not being able to run this race, tears prick into the back of my eyes. I don't know that it's off the table yet entirely, but it's not looking good.



I was so excited when I finished grad school in December to register for another marathon. I was excited to have the time and energy to dedicate to training, and I was over the moon when I got into the Chicago lottery. It's a race I've always wanted to do, and I didn't really know when I'd be lucky enough to get in.

It seemed like all the stars perfectly aligned for my post-grad school marathoning comeback. To think I might not get to do this race now is really hard and really upsetting.

But I'm trying to keep things in perspective (some days I'm better at this than others). I'm hopeful that I'll have some better answers in a couple of weeks. I'm hopeful that the dry needling will help and that the MRI won't show anything too bad. And I'm still holding on to the tiniest bit of hope that Chicago isn't totally out of the picture yet.

As you can probably guess from the title of this post, things aren't going so well on the hip front. It just doesn't seem to be getting better (my PT might disagree with this assessment, but right now it's how I feel).



This past weekend I feel like I had a pretty major set back. The pain in my hip was excruciating.

I tried to run Saturday morning because I was allowed to do that. It went so much worse than last week's attempt. My hip hurt the entire time. Every time I tried to swing my leg through its full range of motion there was pain that wasn't there the previous week.

I was so beyond frustrated. Up until that point, I felt like I'd been making baby steps in the right direction.

But then Saturday morning the pain legitimately felt worse than when I'd initially gone to see my PT in the first place.

Sitting in the car Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning driving to and from my friend's wedding probably didn't help. Car rides are always super painful for my hip. It gets really stiff and then getting out of the car hurts like crazy.

(The wedding was gorgeous by the way, so here's a happy picture to break up this sad post).



Marathon training was supposed to start Monday. Because I am perhaps a moron, I decided I wanted to try a short run again to see if Saturday was just a fluke. I'd had success the previous week running for a short distance. Plus on the treadmill at PT on Wednesday things seemed to go OK. I really wanted Saturday's painful run to be a fluke.

It wasn't. Monday hurt a ton. I went about seven minutes before bailing, walking home and fighting back tears.

I managed to hold off the tears until I made it into my apartment, and then the flood gates opened. I'm pretty sure I cried for two hours straight. I cried in the shower, on the phone with my mom, on my sofa, in the kitchen while making dinner, on the sofa again while re-reading Susan's blog about her hip injury/surgery.

I cried because I was sure the Chicago Marathon was going to be a no go. I can barely walk some days without pain, how ever will I train myself up to run 26 miles by October?

I cried because I still don't really know what's wrong with my hip, and I'm frustrated and I want it to not hurt anymore.

I cried because I know the next step is pretty much an MRI on my hip, and I was scared what that MRI might show. I cried because I was worried I'd need the same hip surgery that Susan and my friend Zac had last summer/fall.

But I cried mostly because I miss being able to function like a normal person. I miss being able to do the things I love to do and I'm sick of always being in pain.

The end.

(I'll write another post on next steps and where we go from here, but this post is already long and angsty enough).