I left the last post after having surgery on both knees. Unfortunately, this didn't help my knee pain - I'm actually pretty sure it made it worse.
And to add to the problems, I started to notice pain in my adductor region in the hip. This started in my right hip, but within a couple of days had spread to the left.
At first I ignored it - I just assumed I'd tweaked a muscle and that it would get better. As you've probably guessed...it didn't.
I was still having physiotherapy for my knees at the time, so I mentioned it to the physio. He thought it was adductor tendonitis and prescribed some eccentric exercises, which seemed to help a bit but not for long. Just like the knee pain, the adductor pain had reached a certain level and then stopped getting worse - but it wasn't getting better either.
By this point I was despairing. I decided to focus on getting the hip pain better first, as I'd already tried everything for my knees without success. I had a contrast MRI, X-ray, numerous consultations with physios, sports doctors and various other professionals. No-one could come up with anything that helped.
At one point, a sports doctor was convinced I had a labral tear in both hips. If you don't know what this is, it's basically a small tear in the cartilage surrounding the hip joint. The strange thing was that they couldn't explain why it wasn't showing on MRI (it usually does) and what would have caused it in both hips simultaneously. Even so, they wanted me to have surgery on one hip at a time, each with a 6 month recovery period and a low chance of ever being able to play sport again!
This is another example of a major problem in the healthcare industry. Some professionals are far too trigger happy and, with the best intentions, do more harm than good. Looking back, I cringe at how close I was to going through with that surgery. Fortunately, the surgeon was less convinced than the sport doctor and advised me not to do it.
In the end, the diagnosis that made most sense was a small hernia in both groins. It still didn't really fit the symptoms, but it was a relatively minor keyhole surgery. I had that around four years ago, and it first it seemed to help. The pain came back gradually though...and in the long run it hasn't helped.
Once again, this isn't the end of the story. Shortly after the surgery, I began to develop tendon pain in other areas of my body. But this post is already too long, so I'll leave it for next time.
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