The Commoner and Dial a Doctor

Do you have the time to listen to me whine?  Of course you do and thank you Green Day

As you remember from Wednesday I hit a snag with this weird hip Butt issue that I had.  Today is Sunday and was my seven mile run and things still hurt.  It's not a hurt hurt but a achy pain.  My form was shot, my time stunk, I looked like this.

Since my butt-hip started hurting on Wednesday I've done the following things.  A massage which focused on my hot spot and stretching, and yoga for hip pain.  I've been really good about taking care of this problem.  I stayed off my feet.  I was doing good

But Sunday's fail on my trail  (like that?  When you listen to rap you learn how to rhyme) really freaked me out.  I'm training for a marathon I have no time for injury.  

Since budget cuts hit a few years ago my insurance well let's just say it's not good.  The copay alone is 40 dollars.  That's 40 QVC available dollars.  I knew my local primary care doc would just tell me nothing and would take up a good chunk of my day and probably be days before she could see me anyway.  I kind of have British health care without the cost savings.  But I had a solution.

We have this service through our insurance where you pay $5 dollars and you can talk to a 'doctor' on the phone or over the internet.  I was going to email the doctor but you know how it goes for me with passwords and such so I ended up calling.  

The doctor asked a lot of questions and said I had inflammation of the hip joint, or arthritis, or bursitis.   I should take 600 mg of Advil WITH FOOD (he kept saying that part)  every 6 hours.  No stretching! No pressure -oops that probably means the deep tissue massage was bad.  No sitting or sleeping on that side for 48 hours and definitely no running during that time.

Basically no anything.  So I ask him -look if I don't get better what kind of doctor do I go to.  He said an orthopedic or rheumatoid something doctor.  Now I know arthritis could spell the end of my career as a runner so I'm not choosing to have that one.

I am scouring the bay area for the best orthopedic doctor I can find. Basically they can perform the hip replacement on October 14th because I WILL be running and finishing a marathon on October 13th.  

I'm assuming that doing all the opposite things that I was supposed to do caused some damage to the poor hip-butt.

I'm a former cyclist I live in the Bay Area I'm sure there's a doctor somewhere who can 'help' me.  

 I'm just kidding about that?