April 2012 No More Crunching and Cracking and Femor-acey-what?

Donna was lovely. She did my exam, very thorough, took all my history that I could explain (with a sigh from me first!) watched me walking, stretching in all directions, pulled my legs about in all directions. One movement in particular that she did on my left leg was to flex my leg up and rotate it  OW!!! Pain shooting though my groin straight to my SIJ!

Well she thought she could do some work on my lower back. “No realignments – you’ve had far to much aggressive cracking and crunching about. What you need is just some gentle manipulation and massage to try and free it all up and try to get you exercising and strengthening your back and your leg. You are weak as a kitten” 

Ok sounds like a good plan, especially the not doing any more manipulations. Phew.  But she also said she wanted me to get my GP to refer me for an MRI on my left hip as she said I was testing positive for something called Femoral Acetabulum Impingement, FAI. She explained the CAM and PINCER versions if FAI. She also said that surgery might be requires to fix it. For some reason, this did not freak me out.

FAI, Cam, pincer, all new words to me. I hadn’t got a clue what she was on about but the thought there might actually be something wrong with me for real, that it wasn't all my head felt good!!! Maybe I can get it fixed. Maybe I can not have a bad back?! I got straight on to google when I got home. And so began  the last 18 months of my journey.