I mentioned a couple of months ago that I have had a pain in my backside. I think it is Piriformis Syndrome, however a visit to the doctor last week had him thinking it was Sacroiliitis. The main reason I think he is wrong on that is because Sacroiliitis is typically worsened by prolonged standing or stair climbing, neither of which bother me at all. In fact, because I experience so much pain in either sitting, or standing from a seated position, I have either been on my feet or in an upright kneeling position to work at my desk or eat for months. Standing has not bothered me at all. Until last night I have not even sat down in church for almost 2 months.
However, my visit to the doctor did a couple of things for me. First, it confirmed that I had no major problems that was going to be worsened by exercise and stretching. He gave me the green light to do both. About a month ago I talked with a kinesthesiologist who suggested a couple of stretches that would help loosen the muscles in my derrière. The stretching seemed to help some, but not significantly.
The second thing that talking with the doctor last week did was to get me a prescription to more focused pain medication. I had just been taking Advil which helped with inflammation, but was not doing a tremendous job on the pain. The doctor got me on a pain medication that is often prescribed for arthritis patients (Arcoxia). It has helped considerably with the pain and is an anti-inflammatory. The huge advantage of this is that I am able to keep the pain at bay enough to do more stretching. He also put me on a vitamin B complex of B1, B6 and B12.
I think the single biggest help in my problem is being able to stretch the muscle enough to get it to finally not be constantly tight. I still have pain, but it is nothing like it had been. I actually sat in a chair the last two evenings and did not seem to hurt any worse when I got up.
The stretching routine I use is one I heard about on the Marathon Training Academy podcast. Angie from the podcast put together the video below. For the last 8 days (since I went to the doctor) I have done some kind of warm up exercise of either running or aerobic routine for 30 minutes to an hour and then followed up with the stretches Angie shows in the video. It has been almost unbelievable the progress I have made in a week. Through the years my flexibility has been pretty amazing even as a fat guy. But when I started doing this stretching routine I discovered I am not near as flexible as I was just a year ago. This could be what caused my problems to begin with. But in the last week being faithful to get my muscles well warmed up and stretching with this video, I have gained most of my flexibility back and can see hope for the end of my problems.
Thank you Dr. Unpronounceable-Name and Angie for giving me the medicine and tools I needed to get back on the road to recovery.