Hip update (the saga continues...)

I hate my hip muscles. So I saw Olga, the massage therapist, on a weekly basis for about a month. I've responded very well to her treatments, but I could tell there was stuff going on. She asked if I was seeing the DO, and I then realized I hadn't seen Dr. Craddock in a very long time. So I made an appointment with Dr. Craddock, the DO, for last week. Seeing him was a good idea, because he found my pelvis to be all kinds of screwed up. He worked on my lower back and shoulder as well, and I felt so much better leaving the office.

However, the day following his treatment it felt like things were.... off. I was sitting at work and without thinking I stretched, flexing my glutes. This resulted in a very loud, heavy, "Thunk, thunk, thunk" sound emanating from my lower back and hips. Although I felt much better, I worried that I had just undone Dr. Craddock's treatment, and the feeling that something was off increased.

After some phone tag, I finally talked to him and he recommended another session on Thursday. So I saw him yesterday, and he commented that my tailbone and hips were definitely not in the right place, but they were very out of whack in a very different way. This is actually a good thing, as it means Dr. Craddock's earlier treatment worked on one thing, but left an underlying issue unresolved, which he would now treat.

So today is the day after the second treatment, and I feel something is still amiss. I feel like one of my muscles is tight from the the adjustment, and that is causing pain, and I think I know just which muscle (or at least which group) it is: my hip adductors.

It's a bit of a story (it always is), but I think I know why these little, but very important, muscles are giving me fits.

Back in Dec-Jan, I was seeing Dr. Bills and Olga for my hip. Dr. Bills found a lot of issues with my adductors, found they were very tight. I told Olga this, and she paid some attention to them, but at some point I mentioned how Dr. Bills was working on them, and so it seems that she stopped working on them (I guess they are rather uncomfortable to work on) and let him do it. I saw them, and then saw Dr. Craddock as well, and then I was pain free and it was awesome.

So I was pain free for like six weeks, and I thought myself cured. Honestly I don't know if I saw Olga in the time but then the pain started to return. I didn't take care of myself, and so the pain had returned. I started seeing Olga with more frequency, but there was specific pain in my hip, and it def felt like the hip adductors. By the second or third treatement, I told Olga about the pain and she apologized, saying that she thought I was still seeing Dr. Bills and had left that area alone. She started working on it and it felt much better. However, something was still off and so I decided to see Dr. Craddock (this is where the first paragraph takes place).

My point is I now know what tight adductors feel like, and that's what I currently have. This also tells me that Dr. Craddock's treatment is slightly incomplete (although it was awesome on my lower back and shoulder) on my hip.

There was a time earlier this year that I saw Dr. Craddock followed by Olga later in the day. The schedule was actually unintentional, but I think it was what really put me on the right track. I have another appointment with Dr. Craddock three weeks from now, I'll see if I can schedule an appointment with Olga then.

In the mean time, I'm doing a lot of self massage with a tennis ball on my adductors, hoping this will help.

It seems I happened upon some magical combination of treatments earlier this year, and it's been a process to figure out what that combination was. It seems that Dr. Bills treatment was helpful at the time, but is no longer needed (I hope), and now it's just some combination of Dr. Craddock and Olga.

God I hope that I can figure this out, because although I've lived with this pain for years now, the fact that I KNOW it doesn't have to be this way is driving me crazy.