Tags
bursistis, corticosteroid, cortisone, cycling, injury, IT band, marathon, physio, recovery, running, training
Many moons ago, possibly in a galaxy far, far away, there was a formerly obese runner who suddenly experienced intense pain in the outside of his left hip. After a couple of weeks of rest and ice, he consulted his online GP, Dr Google, before seeking the advice of a physiotherapist.
Enough of the third person – back at the start of 2015 I entered the year with a niggling ankle tendon injury which then lead to a persistent pain in my left hip. I had a look online for past experiences of fellow runners and thought it might be bursitis on my hip joint caused by an inflamed IT band.
Bursitis is the swelling of a bursa, which is a small sac of fluid which lives on bony joint areas to help protect them. As muscles and tendons slide back and forth over those bony protrusions, the bursa acts as soft pad to stop the friction damaging the joint. In some cases, most often as a result of overuse or increasing training load too quickly, the muscles and tendons involved can become inflamed, which then causes the bursa to fill with fluid and swell before eventually leading to pain.
So, off to the physio I went, armed with my extremely limited research, to see what was recommended. Instantly he told me that it couldn’t be bursitis as that normally presents swelling at the surface and reddening of the skin. Instead, it’s probably piriformis syndrome (inflammation of a tiny but strong muscle in the bum). “Do these uncomfortable stretches for a few weeks and you’ll be fine.”
But I was not – the stretches did not prevail, the pain got worse and I probably didn’t help with my lack of patience as a patient and a mentality of ‘well, if it’s going to hurt anyway, it might as well hurt running.’
Fast forward to November and I’m making my second trip to the Musculoskeletal Assessment Centre for the results of my latest MRI scan – this time on my left hip, looking to identify potential damage to the tendons that join the gluteal muscles to the hip bones.
Fully expecting to be told that there was extensive damage and that running was completely out of the question – and more than likely that cycling wasn’t helping matters – it came as a great surprise to receive a very different diagnosis.
The bone’n’joint doctor’s exact words were: “there’s no sign of any damage at all, just some minor inflammation on the IT band, which is causing pain as a result of bursitis.
“The best thing you can do is have a massage, keep doing some stretches for the IT band and avoid running for a few weeks.
“Would you like a cortisone injection? That would help too.”
Result – I accepted the cortisone shot, so by 1980s pro cycling standards I’m officially a cheat. But after such a long and protracted series of mis-diagnoses and confused solutions, it is great to finally receive what appears to be some good news. That doesn’t mean I can dust off my running shoes and start clocking up the miles, as I need to resolve the root cause of my issues, but it is certainly a positive step and something to cling on to.
As I write this, I’m allowing the corticosteroid to do its job – it’s Saturday morning and I would normally spend 45 minutes swimming before a lunchtime bike ride, but given that today’s forecast is at best horrendous, it seems like a good opportunity to spend the day indoors. In addition, a little reading around the subject of cortisone injections suggests that allowing 24-48 hours for the steroid to do its job is probably the best approach. And after all, a little patience never killed anyone.
Right now, there’s a little pain in the area where I took the injection, but I believe that this is what’s known as a ‘flare’ and is nothing to be concerned about at this stage.
In the meantime, I’ll be heading out to upgrade my foam roller (the current one looks a bit like an apple core), and possibly allowing myself to dream of actually using my London Marathon GFA time for something more than a free magazine this year.
Well I do like to dream big.