My body’s been hurting again lately. Stress mixed with too little sleep has really gotten to me and, as usually is the case, pain is the result.
Despite the fact that exercise generally helps with my general pain levels, it’s really hard to get my body motivated to do anything when it hurts. Like any sane human being, I have quite a strong aversion to pain so I try to avoid it as much as possible. Unfortunately, putting myself in more pain, temporarily, really is the answer to lessening pain in the long run.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to get back in the flow of working out and minimizing my body pain while doing so. I’ve even gone on a short run. Granted, that was mostly because I was angry and needed a way to work out my anger without breaking things or other acts of physical violence to which I’m not usually prone.
A few weeks ago I decided that I ought to go back to massage therapy.
I know, it sounds all good and nice and “woo hoo, I get a prescription for massages twice a week,” except for when you consider that they’re messing with my scar tissue.
Actually, it still kind of rocks.
I had my first appointment last Sunday and while she was working my shoulders and neck it was, indeed, a “hurts so good” kind of situation, until she got to my lower back/hips area. I had forgotten just how ungodly painful it was when I used to have my hips worked on. Now that I think about it, I remember how much Aleve I used to down before those appointments.
It became better over time but I never actually completed the treatment on my hips. Honestly, I’ve been paying for it this whole time. There are times that I get up from my desk at work and have to catch myself on the edge of the desk because my hips are still so bad.
For those who haven’t been following, I ran myself over four and a half years ago. Smooth, right?
On Thursday night I had my second appointment and I made sure to go prepared, i.e. sufficiently doped up to not jump and/or cry when my hips are touched. I’m still so thankful that my doctor taught me how to combine pain medications for maximum benefit without burning through any of my internal organs like that one time I gave myself an ulcer because I took so much Tylenol over a period of a month.
Bad news.
I’m hoping that this time around I’ll be able to follow through and finish the treatment so I won’t have as many problems walking, running, standing up, or doing pretty much anything that involves my hips. I think that a major part of my commitment issue with running is the fact that sometimes I’ll be limping after the fact. Hell, sometimes I’ll be limping for no reason whatsoever.
Granted, I also usually end up limping for a day after sex but oddly, it doesn’t seem to have the same avoidant result. It does make one of my best friends laugh at me, though.
Saturday was my third appointment, so far, and it left me feeling much better afterward but it also caused me to wake up throughout the night with leg and foot cramps because we spent so much time working on my legs. That was FUN. By the morning my spasmodic muscles seemed to have calmed down.
Besides the night time pain, it hasn’t been that bad. I’ve had a constant moderate soreness but I can tell that things are improving.
My current treatment plan is for twenty sessions in twelve weeks. After that I’ll go back to my doctor and reassess. In the meantime, I’d like to incorporate gentle strength training back into my routine to work with the massage therapy. There’s a Pilates studio right across the street from my workplace that I’m considering giving a try. Classes open up at the beginning of each month so I’d start in the beginning of August.
I think that the two would complement each other well. It might also help me to tighten up some of my flabby bits. That’s, like, the point of this blog, right? Granted, it will also mean being awake by 9:30am every Sunday for a month. I’m really not sure how I’ll handle that. It will probably involve a lot of brattiness and Sunday afternoon naps.
