The Problem With Inconsistent Posting.

When you only update your blog every six to seven months, there is all of this pressure to come up with something really blogworthy for your big comeback post.

Sorry. This is not that post.

I mentioned my piriformis problems the last time I posted. It turns out that I don't have piriformis syndrome (maybe? probably?) but that my spazzy piriformis was a symptom of something else.

After I had Gav, I started running as soon as I got the all clear from my doctor. I was (I thought) very careful. I timed myself and kept to short intervals. Even if I felt great (yeah, right. 20 postpartum pounds out running in the hottest summer in recorded history. Like that EVER felt great.), I made myself stop and walk. I slowly built my intervals and was doing great. I added hot yoga to my routine in July and everything felt amazing.

Until it didn't.

One afternoon, the day after a yoga class and hours after a fantastic run, I started to have a weird, twisty pain in my left hip and into my lower back. I took a few days off, then went to see my chiropractor when it didn't get better after a week.

I kept up with the yoga, but dropped the running because it was excruciating. A couple of months later, my yoga groupon was all spent, so I stopped that, too. A few weeks later, the pain was keeping me up at night and I could barely walk. This was about 3 months after the pain started.

My next step was the obvious one: I crowdsourced a solution on Facebook. Natch.

That led me to a sports medicine DO who diagnosed piriformis syndrome and sent me to physical therapy.

I don't think anyone who knows me would argue when I say that I have a stubborn ass. True to form, what should have taken 6 weeks of therapy ... didn't. It was about 20% better after the initial 6 week course. The doctor extended it, apparently indefinitely. By April, I was about 90% better but hadn't made any moves on that last 10%.

That's how I became a physical therapy dropout. Did you know that if you graduate from PT you get a T shirt? You do! I didn't.

Back to Dr. Sportsmedicine who, troubled by some numbness that went all the way to the bottom of my foot, ordered a spinal MRI. I have had some not-fun medical tests and procedures and the MRI was definitely not the worst, but it was up there! It's like a bad fair ride: shaky, teeth rattly, with flashing lights, and loud sounds and a funky smell of alcohol.

That showed that my spine is gorgeous and perfect and not causing me pain in my hip (though it is starting to show its age a little around the disks).

Hmm. OK. But it still hurts? Yep. Sure does. Not badly, but it's there.

Moar MRI!! Now with 300% more really fucking long needles!

That was how I spent my Monday. This time, they were looking a little more closely at my hip and that involves injecting it with radioactive contrast dye. It took the not-fun, trapped-on-a-fair-ride of the MRI to new, stabby levels.

And that's that. I'm able to run again, thank god. My sanity doesn't like it when I don't run and tends to vacate at those times. I'm very slow (more slow than I used to be, which was already pretty sah-low) and my left leg feels heavy and weak.

I'm not sure what I'm hoping the results of today's MRI will be. It could show nothing (obvs) or it could show that I need a cortisone injection or surgery. I feel like nothing is the best outcome.

But that won't fix my leg.