Picking up the Pieces

So I thought I'd update my status for those that don't already know. On tap last night was a speed workout prior to our race in Windsor this Saturday. I hadn't run in essentially 3 days, but my hip was feeling slightly better than it was the last couple days, not 100% but I wanted to atleast give the workout a go, what's the worse that could happen right the hip tightens up and I stop right? Well after the 20 minute warmup and about a mile into the tempo run, I was slightly dropping off our pack a bit and worked hard to get back up with the group. The hip felt very weird and uncomfortable but not terrible. At almost exactly the 2km marker within about a 5 second span that hip went from feeling mediocre to a 10 on the pain scale - meaning the worst pain you can imagine. I instantly had to pull up and stop dead in my tracks. I couldn't lift my left leg off the ground, and starting hobbling back to campus. After what felt like an eternity, I guess word traveled up through the different pace groups that I had really hurt myself, and one of the coaches circled back to get me to get me on his bike to make it back to campus. The coaches and my fellow teammates would come talk to me and ask how I was but I really didn't feel like talking. At that point I just wanted to be on my own. I've had my fair share of injuries, and I do know what a season ending injury feels like, and this was it. I'm not going to go completely into the details, but basically when I went to sleep that night, which ended up being the most painful and uncomfortable sleeps of my life, other than the night after Around the Bay, I was sure my hip flexor was the issue and probably a severe tear. When I woke up in  the morning now I couldn't actually put weight on the leg, and had to crawl to go to the bathroom. My hero of a Mom, offered to help and drove me to class and to the hospital to get checked. The doctor who I saw in the emergency room was dumb as a brick, and said its a muscle strain take some advil and rest. I said - in my head - you're a %$#@ idiot, I've had about 600,000 muscle strains in my life of being heavily involved in sports, and this seems slightly worse than those previous plus umm what muscle, you haven't done any manual muscle testing to tell me if its rectus femoris, illosoas, adductor longus, gracilis, sarotorius, pectineus, adductor brevis, adductor magnus, let me stop there and say quite frankly there a shit load of muscles in the thigh, which one did I strain and to what degree. You haven't palpated any of the muscles, haven't done extensibility testing, or contractibility testing, hell you the one who went to med school didn't even tell me once to ice the area. This is who they let into med school, my goodness I'm glad I'll be making a fifth of what someone as ignorant and dumb as a post makes. She actually said to me at one point well a strain means some of the muscle fibres have tears, ya I kind of know that, I'm the one who will actually be doing something for their patients not just referring them off to see someone else, I also know that depending how many of those muscle fibres tear is kind of important in terms of prognosis. If 5% have torn well heck I'll be up and running before the end of this post, but if 75% have torn, then I won't be running until atleast Remembrance day. Anyways so I wasn't exactly happy with the diagnosis, well because, there was none. So I had to ask her "can I have an ultrasound". She says back in a snarky way well what do you think an ultrasound is going to show. In my head now, "Frank play nice, don't give her that face, you know the one like what ever happened to natural selection, you know only the smart and strong survive." Now out loud, well Dr. the diagnostic ultrasound will allow us to non-invasively see the extend of the soft tissue injury which will allow us to organize a safe, effective, and realistic protocol for the patient, me. Plus its cheaper and faster to use than an MRI, and is still extremely sensitive for tendon tears, muscle tears, cartilage injuries, inflammation, nerve entrapment, whatever. So she referred me for an ultrasound. So glad that I'm in Canada with free access to healthcare. Now I can see why we offer it for free, just send people off to crawl around campus chewing advil, no testing, no imaging, no diagnosis. You realize if I was in the States, I would have had every diagnostic test even unnecessary ones done on me to figure out exactly what was wrong for insurance purposes. Hell it would cost a lot of money, but really if you don't value health than what do you value - Shit I just thought that will be my slogan for my clinic "If you don't value health than what do you value," or it could be my ad campaign running for office and say GO PRIVATE at the bottom. So my season may be over who knows, I could be out for a few weeks with a minor strain, could be out about 6-8 weeks with a moderate one, and could be 3,4,5,6 months if its a grade 3 tear. At this point I don't know, if there is bruising on the hip in the next couple days than it means I won't be running or maybe going pro cycling until 2015 since it means a complete tear. Basically at this point I'm in the ? zone, or in sporting terms I'm out indefinitely. Update you all later until the storm clears and I can hit the cross training block harder than ever. Until then I think I've said it before in another post but I will remind you again, happy running, and I mean it. You could waste you life working all day and living like a sloth at night or put those bright coloured shoes on go outside and feel the air rushing pass your face, your heart pumping good clean blood to every corner of your body, get lost in the challenge, and just run.