Chapter Three: To Run in the Family
My friend Miles suffers from tightness in his hip flexors. Mostly on his left side, but it can flare up on either. The tightness has made him particularly prone to stress fractures, too.
“It's my hip flexors specifically, so, hip to back; they're just particularly tight,” he said. “There's not much I can do for it, besides stretching, physical therapy, heat, ice.”
He suffered from a few sports-related injuries growing up, but there wasn’t really an inciting incident, or moment in time he can point to, where the issue started.
“When I really started recognizing it was sophomore year of high school,” he recalled. “When stretching, I would notice that I can’t quite reach as far as other people. And I could feel the ligament muscle go over the bone, and apparently you're not supposed to feel that. And I also had a stress fracture that year, so I went to see a doctor and did some tests and checked my mobility.”
It was then that a medical professional first pointed out that his hips were “really, really tight.” In the years since, he has found himself having to move more slowly or take a pause before walking around after long periods of sitting.
“I ran all through high school and since seventh grade, track and cross country, and that did not help; it puts a lot on the hips. And since being in college and running less than I did and stretching less than I did, it's definitely gotten worse. I hate that sometimes it can make it a little difficult to walk immediately after I stand up.”
“It wasn't really bad till I got to college,” Miles said. “It just causes slight mobility issues. But it does get better if I consistently stretch or do yoga to engage it and actively work on it.”
He described a specific episode from just the past weekend: after sitting all day at his job, he came home to realize there was a lot of pain in his hips.
“After being on my feet and walking around doing stuff all day, it was bad. I had to lay in specific positions so it wouldn't hurt, and I had trouble falling asleep because of it, which doesn't usually happen.”
Some chronic conditions are genetic, though not all. Having family members with chronic pain quickly clued Miles into what he was in for.
“I kind of know how it goes. It's something you deal with, something that you get through. No way out but through.”
“He's had several back surgeries, and he’s a candidate for spinal fusion,” he said of his stepdad, who suffered a back injury from playing college football. “He's never really been able to find a perfect solution. I've seen him laying on the floor just because sitting hurts. He’d just be laying down, watching the TV, his feet on the ottoman.”
Miles’s mother faces similar hip mobility issues in her lumbar spine, where the lower back connects to the hips. She works out six days a week, he told me, and is extremely diligent about not missing any days.
With her as a model, Miles knows he can address his pain through being vigilant with exercising and stretching. Still, such a regimen is far from easy to maintain, and any lapse in routine can cause the pain to return with a vengeance.
Outside of staying active, he has not sought other treatment methods. After one of his stress fractures, a doctor floated the idea of physical therapy, but he did not end up pursuing that. And these days, a busy college schedule has only made it harder to fit in additional medical care.
“It was a pain to get to a specialist, and that was when I was in high school, so my mom was helping me then,” Miles said. “It's much more difficult to get access to medical care when you're on your own. Making time for it in a college schedule is hard, with your limited resources and time.”
With more time, Miles said, he would absolutely pursue more comprehensive medical treatment options. As of now, though, it is easy to put his chronic pain on the backburner, especially since he does not find it to be too obstructive to his everyday life.
“My health insurance is good, and I'm thankful for that, and the University has relatively easy access to things, but it's still hard to get appointments because they're so understaffed,” he said. “My physical, mental, and emotional health fall to the wayside a little with all the things I have to get done.”