Turning 70 has really thrown me for a loop and I thought turning 60 was traumatic. I refused to let my kids have a party for me, although I did relent and we all went to dinner together.

Don’t get me wrong, I am very thankful that I have reached this age, to not only reach it but to be fairly healthy and active and I can still do almost anything I want to do (a little slower and a lot more clumsy). The one thing I’ve been having a problem with these last several years though, is a burning pain in my right hip after I’ve walked for a while. When we went to the Botanical Garden a couple weeks ago, the pain got so bad that I didn’t know how I would make it to the car.

I decided maybe I needed physical therapy so I went to see my Primary Care doctor.  I had to wait several weeks for the appointment which is aggravating, but I have to remind myself that many other people need her much more than I do. She remembered that I’d had a problem several years ago with what originally was thought to be my back. After a little poking and prodding on my hip, she diagnosed my pain as Piriformis syndrome and authorized physical therapy.

Physio-pedia.com describes the Piriformis:

The piriformis is a thick, flat muscle and the most superficial muscle among the deep gluteal muscles. It is part of the lateral rotators of the hip. The muscle leaves the pelvis through the greater sciatic notch until it attaches to the superior margin of the greater trochanter. Shaped like a pear, it lies nearly parallel to the posterior margin of the gluteus medius.

At my first physical therapy appointment, I told the therapist about the previous problems I’d had with my sacroiliac joints. I thought maybe this problem was somehow connected since the piriformis muscle attaches to the sacrum.
Like the old song says:

The thigh bone’s connected to the hip bone
The hip bone’s connected to the backbone
The backbone’s connected to the neck bone
Doin’ the skeleton dance

During 2018 and 2019 I dealt with excruciating pain in my sacroiliac joints (although at the time I didn’t know that was where my pain was coming from). Any movement that caused my sacroiliac joints to move was almost debilitating. I would try to get out of my recliner, but the pain would be so bad, that I had to resort to falling forward to my knees so I could turn around and push myself up. I couldn’t roll over in bed without hanging on to the headboard or get out of bed without terrible pain. I remember one morning when I stood up, the pain was so bad I thought I’d wet my pants before I could get my legs to move. It was that bad. Stairs? Forget it. I went up the basement stairs leaning on my hands. We drove down to Lake of the Ozarks for vacation and after sitting in the truck for an hour or so, when I got out, as soon as my feet hit the payment, I had to hang onto the truck door to keep from falling, the pain was so bad.

I was treated for the sacroiliac problems by a pain management doctor. He gave me ultrasound-guided cortisone injections in my joints. They would help for a while (they also put my left leg to sleep for an hour after the procedure so I couldn’t walk) but gradually they wore off.

At the time I was working a part-time job where I stood up most of the time. My job was weighing in and out big trucks and had me standing at a desk for ten hours a day. During downtime, I could sit in a tall chair. I was tall enough that by hiking my left hip onto the seat I could scoot my butt over and sit comfortably.

After the Pain Management Doctor diagnosed my pain as my joints instead of my back,  I turned to the god of all knowledge, Google,  to see what could have caused this problem. I found that the uneven movement of my hips after two-plus years of ten-plus hours a day, several times a week, the joints had become so irritated and inflamed that it was causing my terrible pain. What finally healed my joints (mostly) was quitting that job. I still have some pain in my joints but nothing like what it had been.

Now I’m in week three of my physical therapy. The exercises he prescribed are mostly the same ones I did for years in my exercise class. We disbanded the class a year ago and I’ve not been at the aqua aerobic class since April so I’m sure this has contributed to this issue getting worse. But at $40 for each session, I don’t foresee continuing them very long.