Well, no fracture! There appeared to be a crack on the xray, but the doctor said the pain wasn't extreme enough for it to be a stress fracture, so he and the radiologist decided it was probably just an artifact from a blood vessel. Thoughts are that it is either a tendonopathy or a low-grade muscle tear, with only a slight possibility of fracture or the last alternative, the rather scary torn labrum / related bone on bone grinding in the joint problem (my younger brother just had surgery for this and it sounds awful). With all of this in mind, tendonopathy is probably most likely since that's what it was in a similar region last year, but the argument against that would be that cortisone was super helpful last year, but not all that helpful this year. Who knows.
Getting an MRI should diagnose things pretty well, but getting it done in Utah would cost about $500 given how bad student insurance is. With that in mind, I'm going to get one when I'm home in MN in a couple weeks.
In any event, for now, I think that rest is gradually making things better finally. As of a few days ago, I wouldn't have agreed with that statement ("racing" on Saturday probably caused a flareup), but in the last 72 hours, things have gotten quite a bit better. In fact, I didn't even think about my hip/glute while walking around at work today, which is encouraging. On top of that, I got out for a 90 minute walk with Holly tonight and the pain never got past mild. When I was going downhill at the end, I could tell that I wasn't all that far from a worsening of the pain, but fortunately, it didn't happen. I'm going to go see a supposedly amazing massage therapist whenever he can fit me in, so it will be interesting to see what someone really good can do for this. For both muscle tear and tendon stuff, it should be at least somewhat helpful.
| 