Injuries Suck!

So it's been a week since I got injured and I'm still not better.  <Sigh>.  I've been resting as much as possible, icing whenever I get the chance and taking ibuprofen - obviously I can't NOT walk at all, so when I do start walking around more the pain gets worse as the day goes on.  What's weird though is I went on a short, slow walk with a friend over the weekend while she was walking her dog, and I swear I actually even felt a little better after.  But by resting for this long I feel like I'm turning to mush and I hate it!

The good news is, I do not think I've actually injured my hip joint, which I was kind of freaking out about before.  I had been nervous about another labral tear, and then I thought maybe I had a touch of bursitis, but after my PT friend offered to do some range of motion exercises (Thank you! Sharon), it seems like my range of motion in my hip is fine and it doesn't appear that my bursa is giving me problems.  She performed a little bit of PT magic to release some of my spasming muscles.  It appears that I definitely have some kind of injury to my hamstring, possibly glute, piriformis, IT band, and who knows what else.  Admittedly, I only know what my hamstring and glute are in that list...  Sharon was shouting out the rest of them when trying to pinpoint where I felt pain.  The most pain I feel is in my right butt-cheek.  I don't know if it's constantly in spasm or I injured something there or what, but what probably worries me more is my hamstring.  I have tenderness (when I poke and prod) all the way from my butt-cheek to the back of my knee pretty much.

Looking at an image of the different parts of the hamstring, I have self-diagnosed that the part I've injured is the biceps femoris part of the hamstring because the pain seems to follow more towards the outer side of my leg, not inner.  Of course, an open connection to the internet and me are not a good combination.  I usually end up diagnosing myself with the worst possible of diseases.

Photo from orthoinfo.aaos.org

After having Sharon perform her magic on me last night, I was feeling WORLDS better when I woke up this morning, even practically skipped to her car during pre-school drop-off today to retrieve my purse that I'd left at her house.  Sadly, my euphoria of being healed was a bit short-lived as the pain came back more and more throughout the day.  I left a voicemail for one of the massage therapists at the Y because I think that's my next course of action.  There doesn't seem to be a plethora of "sports massage" therapists in the area that I could find easily online, and I'm not sure what types of massage the therapist I called at the Y specializes in, so hopefully she'll call me back soon.  In addition, I ordered a thigh compression sleeve from Amazon, which I remember wearing during HS track due to ongoing hamstring issues back then - and if I remember correctly, it was even my right hamstring then too...  Anyway, worth a try.

I also ordered a foam roller from Amazon as an "excellent aid for self massage of the upper and lower back, calf, hamstring, glutes and quads" and to perform "myofascial release" of the muscles.  It'll look something like this (although I doubt I'll look quite so happy doing it...)

Photo from Amazon.com

So yeah, that's what I've got for how to next proceed.  I should probably consider getting another pair of actual custom-made orthotics too.  Ugh!  I hate being injured!!!  I feel like I'm turning into a sloth!