Injury Update

I injured myself seriously last Saturday... The pain was always there, so I decided not to exercise last week. All I did was go for a very short swim on Wednesday.

The physio said on Monday that I had hip tendonitis and she did ultrasound on my hip to relieve some of the inflammation. However, the pain didn't really go away and my lower abdominals started to hurt a lot more as the week progressed. By Thursday, the pain was so intense that I was starting to wonder if it really was just a running injury or if there was something else going on. On Friday, the pain was unbearable, so I called the health line. The nurse told me all the possible causes of my pain: muscle strain, twisted ovary cyst, hernia, appendicitis... I was terrified that I would have to get surgery. I had a ART appointment at 6:30 on Friday night, and I decided to ask if it could be any of those things or if it really was just a running injury. I was prepared to spend the night at the ER.

The chiro told me it was hip tendonitis AND adductor strain AND pyrimidal muscle strain [the muscle on top of the pubic bone]. Pain of the pyramidal muscle mimics sports hernia, and he asked that I keep an eye for symptoms of hernia, but I don't have any much to my relief. I had always thought ART on my hip flexors was the worst muscular pain possible... It turned out ART on the pyramidal muscle is 20 times more painful - the chiro brought me close to the point of passing out! ;-) ART on the adductors was also very painful, but when he worked on my hip flexors, I told him that I felt as if I was at the Spa because there was almost no pain.

The chiro said there was hope that I could do this month's races and to take it easy with the training... I haven't done any exercise since Friday. I went for a 40 minutes walk, and I hurt a lot when I got home. Nevertheless, the pain has diminished a lot since Friday. I have another ART session on Tuesday - we'll see if I can do some sort of exercise after I get a second treatment.

I'm pretty depressed about all this. I keep telling myself how stupid I was to keep on running when it started hurting. I knew I needed to take a break from the long runs, but I kept pushing because I was so excited about my training - it was going so well! For the first time in my life, my mental was so strong that I felt nothing was impossible. I was starting to dream big: a Half-Marathon in the Fall? Why not! An open-water Sprint Tri this Summer? Sure! Why not? Now, I'm injured and inactive. I'm afraid I'll never get back to the mental state I was in when I got injured. What if I have to build back to it once again? What if I never get back to being so confident in my capacity to swim, bike and/or run?

Another thing that I can't get out of my head is my frustration at all the time I spent in the pool and the possibility that I may not get the rewards of all this hard work. Most of the times I went swimming, I had to kick myself in the butt because I could always think of better things to do. Now, I'm thinking: did I do all this for nothing? Will I not get to the start line of that triathlon? Should I have done stuff with JF or other people instead of spending those evenings or weekend afternoons at the pool? I'm so angry at myself!

Anger is not good for the soul, and not good for the body. It's a poison and it's making me sick. I hope that by writing all of this down, I'll start to feel a little better about what happened. I hope I learn my lesson... Sigh...