FAI (hip impingement) Diagnosis

For a while now I've been having pain in my hip, sometimes my groin, lower back on the same side while running. So I toned down my training to see if it would get better. It didn't, it got worse, so eventually I stopped training altogether for two weeks. After the two weeks, I tried walking only, but there was still pain.

I then went to my doc, who manipulated my hip some, poked and prodded the area while I was 'ow-ing' and 'ouch-ing' and said it seemed to be bursitis and a course of anti-inflammatories should clear it up. I limped home (all the poking and proding made it worse of course *sigh*) and started the anti-inflammatories, so that was another week of rest. At the end of the course, the pain was still there, so it was back to the doc.  He said a cortisone injection into my hip would probably be the next step, but needed to be done by an ortho. He also mentioned the possibility of X-rays and a soft tissue scan. He then sent me to an orthopaedic surgeon for investigation.

Now that I've started running and seeing the benefits in fitness and weight loss, any curtailing of that annoys me immensely :( I wanted to get back to running ASAP, so I was hoping for just the cortisone and no further tests - yeah I wish......

I went to my ortho appointment and he also prodded and poked and manipulated (and I ended up limping more again *sigh*) then said he wanted me to go for X-rays. Soooooooo, off to the radiologists I went, duly got X-rayed and limped back up to the orthos rooms to show him the pics. He took the pics out of the envelope and I was expecting the usual "There doesn't seem to be any problem there" that I have got every other time I've been for X-rays for anything, but instead he studied, looked, ran his finger over the pic in certain areas, looked some more, brought them up on his laptop, made them larger, looked some more.....By now I was getting kinda worried, I mean if nothing was wrong, he didn't need to look so closely - right??

He then put the pics down and looked at me and said "You have some impingement". I must have looked a bit blank, so he proceeded to explain and show me what he meant on the pics. A good explanation (better than I can give) is here: http://www.sportsortho.co.uk/article.asp?article=67

It didn't sound too bad I thought (at this point thats what I thought), but I asked some questions and he gave me some answers. There was also bursitis, so I duly got the cortisone injection into my hip, which wasn't nearly as painful as the ones I had in each shoulder late last year by the same ortho. He said I must have some physio and come back and see him in a month and we would take it from there. I then asked him the million rand question "What is the worst case scenario?" The worst case scenario it seems will be some kind of scope into my hip to see if there is any pathology. I limped out of his rooms feeling vaguely happy that I now knew what the problem was and it was being treated - little did I know.....

This morning I started doing some research on hip impingement, which I discovered is FAI ( the full name is in the article above) and boy did I start getting worried!!!! Then I discovered this blog http://www.understandingfai.com/2008/07/my-story.html and learned a whole lot more, straight from the horses mouth and I'm really thankful to Vanessa's blog because it gave me the best info possible, from the patients point of view. Some of it also scared the hell out of me, especially the painful MRI procedure (although she says the second was better than the first). I'm still in the early stages of my treatment though, so it remains to be seen how far I will need to go and I'm really thankful to my doc and the ortho that it was diagnosed quite early it seems so I may not have too much damage.

I'll let you know how things unfold further down the line :)

PS: One last thing, the ortho initially said 4 weeks rest and I moaned and groaned and mentioned my Two Oceans Half Marathon entry, so he relented and said 1 week rest and then very light training for a while thereafter :)