Deep tissue

I had my first session of physical therapy for my hip yesterday. I was really looking forward to it. Icing and anti-inflammatories, even the vast quantities they urged me to take, haven't made a difference at all. So I've been placing all my faith in the prospect of physical therapy. It was interesting. I was hoping that my PTist, Greg, would be hot since I figured I would have my leg wrapped around him. Quick recap: He wasn't (older and with a family) and I did. So now there's no pressure to shave for PT. (Not that I shaved for yesterday's. You know how lazy I am...)

Anyway, Greg decided that everything pointed towards the hip flexor and focused on it. (Last week's nurse practitioner thought that everything pointed towards tendonitis...) Oh, yay, for the deep tissue treatment. I do so love having a large man boring down with all of his weight onto my hip flexor! I wonder if I have deep tissue bruising; it's definitely tender today! (Ouch, Mitzi just stepped on my poor tender hip flexor. Mitzi's always so good at finding the most sensitive places to stand on (usually a nipple).)

I'm not really sure how I feel about all this. Maybe I'm too much a scientist, too hung up on causal relationships, but I don't know if we're getting to the root of the problem. And Greg is being pretty glib about causality. When he decided on the hip flexor, I mentioned that the NP thought it was tendonitis and asked what he thought of that diagnosis. His answer was that everything's so mixed up together in the hip that I'm probably having problems with both the hip flexor and the tendon, and who can say what was first... Admittedly, my left hip flexor was a lot tighter than the right, but although his deep tissue action hurt, it mostly just hurt where pressure was applied. The pain didn't radiate from where I was being squashed to where my hip really bothers me. When I got home, I was definitely sore, but in new places. I felt it in the front of my hip, rather than the sides where ballet tends to hurt it. All this makes me wonder just how involved my hip flexor is. Maybe it's just tight because it's compensating for a deeper hip problem.

What bugs me the most is an assumption that this is a back problem. Back pain can manifest itself in the hip flexor. I learned that last week while poking around on webMD and Greg corroborated it at yesterday's appointment. But according to webMD (I can no longer find the specific page, of course), hip pain associated with back problems occurs in different parts of the hip than where I feel it. Plus, I know how I abuse my body, and I'm fairly certain that this is a hip problem, not hip pain associated with a back problem. I never have back pain and ballet is kind of a hip-intensive activity...

I guess he's covering his bases by doing things to my back as well. Besides, I don't know if physical therapy can do anything directly for the tendon (assuming it's tendonitis), and loosening up the hip flexor is probably a good idea. And seeing as I've only had one session, it's definitely too early to worry that it's not having an effect. (In case you wondered, ballet didn't hurt any less today.) I'm supposed to give PT a month and if it hasn't improved any, we bring out the big guns. Oooh. MRIs and orthopedists!

I just wish there was strong consistency between the NP and the PT. It makes me wonder about the accuracy of their diagnoses and unsure about what my problem actually is. I fear that they each have their pet diagnoses that they've latched on to because of their own experiences (the NP got tendonitis from golfing and the PT has back trouble) and that they're applying them to me without actually paying much attention to me and my pain. Maybe this is a fallacy on my part, but I feel like my hip can't be treated appropriately if we don't know what the real problem is. This is particularly troublesome since it was the desire to know what's wrong more than anything that prompted me to finally go to the doctor last week. Knowledge is power, right?