pain from past injuries

[giegs]

I'm curious if any of you have any experience dealing with fairly persistent pain from past athletic injuries. Despite my youthful charm and good looks I've really beat the shit out of my body in 25 years. The most significant is a hip injury that required surgery a year ago and never feels "right" while sometimes hurting like hell. Listing others isn't really necessary, I'm sure you get the point.

For those of you in a similar situation, how do you deal with it? Medication? Regular physical therapy? Ignore it and try to power through? Do you let the pain limit or guide your activity?

 

[Patches]

I had a serious injury to my foot. I broke my 5th metatarsal, and it wouldn't heal. Somewhere in the process of the injury and the 3 subsequent surgeries to try to fix it (I fucked it up bad) my peronial tendon got shredded (likely as a result of the splintering from the bone). The doctor who did the initial 3 surgeries told me that the pain I was dealing with was just a result of having a great deal of modification to an area with really intricate architecture. That there was no way to fix it, and it was something I was going to deal with for the rest of my life.

I saw another doctor about it, and he actually investigated the source of the pain. He ordered MRI's and did cortisone injections into the tendon to relieve inflammation. He found the 'shredding' that was causing the pain, and performed another surgery. He was ALARMED at the level of damage to my tendon, and actually had to cut off a big section of it. Since then (and some physical therapy) I have no problems with it. Almost zero pain for several years now.

Basically the words that doctor said to me were, "It is NEVER normal to have a great deal of pain, no matter how much change there has been to the architecture of your bones/muscles/tendons."

Have you seen doctors about the pain? Gotten 2nd and 3rd opinions? Done physical therapy?

 

[giegs]

Interesting. I've had second opinions from folks in the same office, but finding specialists for this type of injury isn't easy in my region. Traveling to another might be an option. I'll check to see if workman's comp would cover that.

More than anything I'm just bummed. After a year of ups and downs I was back to trail running and mountain biking with no issues or pain, just the occassional feeling that something in the joint is "off" which isn't so bad. It makes the flare-up way more devastating than it might otherwise be. The nagging thought of "oh shit do I need surgery again?" is worse than any pain for sure. It's feeling better now, going to go play a round of disc golf and see how it goes.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[highlander]

I hurt my knee when I was hiking and running down a hill when I was in early 20s. Some kind of tendonitis. Never was quite the same after that though gradually over the years, it has bothered me less.