Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Heading Nowhere Fast

It's been another frustrating month since I've posted an update so I thought it was time to do it again. I am nowhere closer to running and cannot even imagine a timetable for my return. As you can imagine this situation is getting more and more infuriating and my search for a solution continues.

In the last four weeks I've aggressively tried to address the supposed problem with massage therapy. My bank account is paying a hefty price while my body continues to stubbornly refuse to heal. Here's a short summary of what we've been working on...

One of the massage therapists who I've been seeing, a very progressive professional who definitely thinks outside the box, is convinced that my problem has to do with a serious case of congestion in the front of the hip as a result of too much sitting, exacerbated by running. In his opinion all of the tissue in that part of the body has become "stuck" and the end result has been "congestion" of two of the largest nerves in the body that control the muscles of the legs: the femoral nerve and the femoral cutaneous nerve. With that, my circulation has been severely restricted, which makes is doubly difficult for my body to heal. The upshot is that whenever I move everything tugs on everything else and it hurts. Also, and this really sucks, because the nerve is not able to control my leg muscles properly I end up using only a small fraction of said muscles to do work. If this theory holds true it would provide an explanation for why I have seen big gains in strength in my upper body while my lower body languishes behind, "stuck" if you will on a plateau of pansy weakness.

While he has not started to work on the psoas muscle and others in that area (Iliacus et. al.), he is firmly of the opinion that once my inguinal ligament is manipulated and allowed to work freely the hips will "open up" and allow my body to regain full range of motion in that region. With that achieved the other problems, which manifest themselves in tremendous pain in the lower abdomen and groin anytime I do anything that requires movement, will finally have a chance to get better.

Although I haven't been getting better I have at least noticed changes. After the treatments the pain moves around a bit so I know his concentration on a two square inch area over the upper hip is doing something. It remains to be seen if this will solve the problem completely.

While all of this has been going on I've been moonlighting with another massage therapist and have her working on my upper back and shoulders. I have had pain there since last May and, given how everything is connected to the spine, including the psoas, I figured it was smart to loosen up those structures to hopefully relieve some pressure on those connecting lower down. I can't believe how many knots I have up around my scapulas and in the traps! I knew I was sore, but this is ridiculous. I guess eventually we all just become numb to the pain and assume that our normal state of being includes these types of discomforts. I've been convinced that this is not supposed to be this way.

In short, I am not running, I am constantly getting worked on, and am continuing to maintain the little bit of sanity I have left with weight training. I don't feel out of shape, but am afraid to step on the scale to find out just how much weight I have gained since the Summer.

Here's to posting something positive next time! (Or drafting something about how I've fallen off of the online running community map since I haven't been able to run myself. I don't know why, but I find it depressing to read about other people's exploits and have avoided scanning the blogosphere as a result. It's not even a conscious thing. It just sort of happens...)

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