Friday, September 27, 2013

My Week in Interjections

Interjections show excitement.  Or emotion.  They’re generally set apart from a sentence… by an exclamation point.  Or by a comma when the feeling’s not as strong.

Thank you School House Rock, for teaching me all I needed to know about grammar, math and government systems!




That was last Friday. Only the interjection didn’t come until about six hours after the injection.

My right hip hasn’t been happy since that last 11-mile run and, as I mentioned in an earlier post, the end result was a recurrence of the dreaded IT Band Syndrome in the leg formerly known as the Good Leg (not to be confused with Angelina Jolie’s Leg.  The Good Leg does not have its own Twitter account.  Yet.)  After foam rolling, stretching, etc., I didn’t have any further sign of ITBS… but my hip was struck by a burning pain every time I ran.  Off I went to my doc, who proclaimed it to be bursitis and gave me a shot of cortisone to reduce the inflammation in time for the Tower of Terror 10-Miler.

Getting the shot wasn’t painful, just icky.  ~shudder~  I have a thing about feeling things go through body tissue.  ~shudder~  It doesn’t make me feel queasy, just eeeewwwwww.  ~shudder~  But still – no real pain.  Just a little discomfort.  So I cruised on back to my job, where I parked my fanny in a chair and proceeded to work six hours in a seated position, secretly fantasizing about my return to running in a few days, better than ever thanks to better living through pharmaceuticals.

And then… I stood up.  Or I tried to, anyway.



I actually looked down at my hip to see if a hot poker might be sticking out of it.

By the time I’d driven home, I was in tears.  A quick Google search indicated I was in the throes of something called cortisone flare, a fairly common reaction to the jabbing of cortisone into the body.  Rest, ice and an anti-inflammatory was the course of action.  So I chased two Aleves with two glasses of wine, parked myself on the couch with an ice pack, and didn’t leave for 36 hours.  When I had to get up to use the bathroom, or feed Leo, it was with a whole lot of wincing, whimpering, limping and grimacing.

As instructed, I waited five days to try running again.  By then, the pain had vanished.  An overcast evening following several days of rain, it was cool(er), cloudy and perfect for a return to running.  Doing slow intervals of 30 seconds running followed by a minute walking, I was okay for about two miles.  No pain, though everything felt “off”, as if my hips and lower back weren’t quite in the right place and my gait felt all sorts of wonky.  And then, after two miles, my hip started hurting again.


So, Thursday morning, I saw Dr. Miracle, my chiropractor.  I pointed to where it hurt – at the very top of my hip flexor in front, and the very top of my gluteus medias in back – and told her that it felt “off” somewhere in between.  Dr. Miracle bent me like a pretzel, pushed, and SNAP-CRACKLE-POP, whatever it was slid back into place and I instantly felt better!  She did some Active Release Therapy on the spots I’d pointed to, finished with some electro stim, and sent me on my way.

Sitting at my desk the rest of the day felt better than it had in weeks.  Driving my car, I felt no pain while pressing on the pedals.  So I decided to give it a real test and fired up Ol’ Bessie, my treadmill.  One mile, walking at a fast clip, with a few runs thrown in…


It felt sooo much better!  No pain, no mechanical weirdness, back to normal.  I followed that mile with a half hour of gentle yoga and went to bed early to give my body extra time to heal and recover.

The big question is, of course: can I make it another NINE miles?  I don’t know.  And I won’t know until a week from tomorrow, when I try.  I’m hoping it’ll be a lot more of this:


And not so much this:




3 comments:

  1. Best of luck as you work back up to the #Tower10Miler! It's amazing what a talented chiropractor can do, isn't it?

    I love how you've interjected these awesome School House Rock interjections :)

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  2. So sorry to hear about everything. I love those interjections and School House Rock. Also, so jealous that you're able to do the Tower 10 Miler! :)

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  3. Principal Translations. inflict pain v expr, (cause suffering), infligir dolor vtr. The point of torture is to inflict pain on somebody in order to dehumanize them. Joni Wheelwright

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