As I mentioned in one of my previous blog posts, I was supposed to see a doctor for the injury in my leg. After surfing the net for some time, I found a sports specialist clinic in Subang Jaya. I immediately made an appointment for that day.
Honestly, I was very worried about what the doctor was going to say about that one-year-old injury. So many thoughts hit my head, including ruling out running for the rest of my life.
The appointment was supposed to be at 3 but I reached 10 minutes later because of traffic jam. So, I quickly got into the clinic when I reached there, registered myself and was on my way into the consultation room.
The doctor was surprised about how long my injury has been there. He asked me "What took you so long to see a doctor?". Then, I had to explain my whole history of very strange events that led to me consulting him only after a year.
I first got my injury when I was sprinting on the small road beside my house. That time, when I just took off from the starting position, I felt a strong pull in the groin area on my right leg. I stopped my training for that day immediately.
After a few days, I continued running as my leg was feeling fine. Just occasionally, I felt a small strain in that area. After returning from my holiday in India, I consulted a sports specialist in Pantai Medical Centre. The doctor said that I had a pull in my upper hamstring.
The doctor told me to rest completely for 3 weeks. With my MSSD (district level athletics championship) just around the corner, I thought that was a suicide mission.That was my biggest mistake. My father was reluctant to send me for physiotherapy because of the high cost. Anyway, I thought it was ok because my pain was reducing.
In January, I suffered a pull on my left quadriceps (on week 1) and right quadriceps (on week 2). Due to the injuries, my coach reduced my training citing fatigue and overstrain as the cause. As the training reduced, the injury in the groin area wasn't nagging me that much. And surprisingly, when I got back to normal training and was approaching the competition, the pain in the upper hamstring reduced.
After MSSD, I realised that the pain was still there and decided to take the 3 week rest. After 2 weeks, I became frustrated at the fact that the pain did not reduce and at time was getting worse. I thought that I should run so that the muscles become stronger (thinking that that's what happened prior to my MSSD). And I continued running like normal.
It was considered off season for me and I just had to do conditioning workouts till SPM was over. Conditioning workouts just cover endurance and speed endurance workouts. The thing was, whenever I did the workouts, I didn't feel the pain in my leg. However, after a few hours the pain would come back.
So, that continued until about 2 weeks before SPM. I decided that I had to try and rest completely as I was hoping to continue full swing training after SPM. I rested for 6 weeks. The pain reduced but it was still there. That's when I decided to consult a doctor again.
After a few X-Rays and scans, the doctor confirmed that I had adductor tendinitis- an inflammation to the adductor muscles due to fast twitching movements (when I sprinted last year). He also added that because the point of origin of the adductor was the pelvic girdle, one of the bones on the right side of my pelvic bone was slightly dislocated.
He told me that it was a huge mistake to not have taken complete rest and visited a physiotherapist immediately when I had the injury. Due to my carelessness (you can call it stupidity), the recovery time which was supposed to take 6 weeks has now prolonged to 3-4 months minimum.
I didn't know what was the problem then. Now, I've learned from another mistake of mine. More importantly, I've learned not to take sports injuries lightly as they could wreck my hopes. Now, I'll just have to wait patiently for 3 months while spending hours on physiotherapy, ice pack, anti-inflammatory gel and stretching and hope for a fast recovery.......
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