Getting Gimpy in the Hippy

I've written before about my right hip -- mild pain, less flexible than the left one. It never bothered me enough to take it to a doctor even though I've read that in vulvodynia, hips and vulvas often go hand in hand. I figured it would be another wild-goose chase, another series of tunnel-vision docs.

Lately, however, the pain is worse, and I seem to lose some strength in my leg when it's in certain positions relative to my torso. It's also poking me in more places, spreading from just the inside of my hip to the outside and my butt and my lower back and my thigh...maybe out of compensating for it all day. The pain still isn't very bad and I might not even care if it weren't for that thing next door that's been whining at me for almost four years.

Then I was talking to my mom about my symptoms, and voila, she has the exact same issues with her hip. She actually went to the doctor for hers last week -- no results yet, but they did some x-rays and strength tests and I hate to say it but I'm really hoping they find something wrong with my mom....

Oh Mommy, No Mommy! But if she can get doctors to help her, maybe I can go to those exact same doctors and say the exact same things and get them to help me too. And then we'll both feel better and do cartwheels, or cartwheels and the 57-year-old-with-arthritis equivalent of cartwheels.

The pain with sitting has also gotten worse -- right below my tailbone ramming up into my spine. Thankfully, as a waitress, I don't do a lot of sitting during the day and can forget about it most of the time, but all the unforgiving chairs of the world have taught me that any career change will come with a butt donut.

(And if any more people tell me it hurts to sit because I'm too skinny, I am going to measure the volume of my butt via displacement and pour an equal amount of liquefied donkey farts over their heads. Not their collective heads -- one by one.)

Obviously I do need to see a doctor, but I don't have health insurance (and the county hospital is not the solution), so I'm working on solving that problem. I'm thinking if nothing results from my mom's visit, I'll start with the physical therapist I was seeing to get her recommendation and go from there. Or I'll camp myself in front of the Cleveland Clinic with a giant neon posterboard presentation of my journey through vulvodynia...ooooh, maybe I'll make a 3-D journey into a posterboard vagina...into the pleasure-dome...

Anyway, if anyone has any thoughts about my symptoms, please let me know. I know a couple of the bloggers I read have been diagnosed with either hip problems or pudendal neuralgia, so I've got those two on my list. The strange and lucky thing is that the hip and butt pain have inspired a feeling of greater control over my vulvodynia rather than a feeling of being burdened by it. There is so much more hope against chronic pain when an actual cause comes into likelihood.