Physio 4 & Doc Followup

My 4th session with physio. Told her I'm not feeling good. My shin hurts and I feel calf pain even when I was on elliptical trainer on Monday. What is going on ? She asked me many questions such as:

• Is the pain more acute after the strengthening exercises?
  
• Did it get more painful after my run in new shoes (i didn't run -_-")? after wearing heels ?
  

She wanted me to monitor or to be more conscious about what I was doing prior to the pain. Ok, will try to take note.

Did the same old sets of strengthening exercises and again deep tissue massage. This time round done by my trainer. Wah, I could feel him using his elbow to massage my calf! I was like just gritting my teeth, burying my face into my arms and screamed (of course I was on mute lah :P). My trainer got a scare when he thought I was crying and asked with concern "You crying ah????" Think he really got worried there ... haha ... aiyo, of coz I wouldn't cry over this rite ? Its painful no doubt, but in a sadistic way, it actually feels damn shiok! :P

The timing was impeccable. My appointment number (to see the sports doc) flashed on the LED once my trainer was done with the massage. Perfect! So I went to see the sports doc (Dr. Jason Chia) and told him the same thing about my shin pain, my NOT running since the last time I saw him. He seemed concerned enough and agreed that I should get another X-ray done. Well, results of x-ray didn't show anything different from 3 weeks ago (that should be a relief!). Since an x-ray is unable to show whether there are fractures, only that there are small "lumps" at the side of the big bone, which might be an indication of stress injury or fractures etc. The shin pain might also be brought on by the muscle stress around the bone area. With so many possibilities (and short of going for a bone scan or MRI), the doctor suggested deep friction (or what I thought was deep tissue massage). This doctor is pretty hands on, brought me back to see the physio and told her to administer deep friction on my shin area. Prior to that though he wanted to do a gait analysis on my running. So off we went to the treadmill where his staff set up the video cam and stuff and got me to do some running. I could feel the pain with every heel strike (didn't notice until Dr. Chia asked me when I felt the pain, push-off or heel-strike)

From his observation of my walking & running, he said I might not pronating enough. Wah lau, sometimes I'm pronating outwards, sometimes not enough. What is this ?? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Dr is not good, i'm just saying why analysis by different docs always give such varying observations ? Very the confused ...

Anyway, ended the session with the deep friction of my shin - specially by the physio. Typically it would be administered by one of the trainers, but the physio had to do it herself because she said she will have to report back to Dr. Chia. Wah seh, not bad hor ? So I had 2 deep friction massages in one morning. I jokingly told my physio that I'm being tortured TWICE in one morning, and that why didn't they consider GA for patients that have to undergo such pain :P
Well, silly me. She explained that they will need to obtain feedback from the patient to ensure they don't injure the muscles and cause bleeding in the course of the massage.

Well, so for now, I have to monitor how I feel. When does my shin hurts, whether my shin feels better after the deep friction (I feel better today).

So well, SCSM is definitely out for me. I have mentioned about the KL pacesetters to both Dr. Chia & physio. Physio doesn't seem that optimistic, and frankly, me neither. Well, just have to pray for the best, hope (oops, thanks to Roentgen for pointing out my little boo boo :P) prepare for the worst.

What to do ? Such is life .. you don't often get what you want.