My Sports Hernia History

May 1st,  2012

I saw my sports medicine doctor in San Francisco and told him my history.   He said he respected the diagnosis that my UCLA doctor made and he was willing to send me to a local hernia surgeon.  I decided to do one last month of physical therapy to monitor my symptoms.  I needed to research and figure things out for myself before going under the knife.

Early April 2012

I was on a treadmill and I felt a nagging sharp pain.  It faded.  I went on to train at my local gymnastics gym, doing adductor exercises, core work and some tumbling.  The next day I woke up frustrated.  It was a flashback to 2010.  The pain was back.  Pain rolling over in bed, getting in and out of the car, and with hip flexion/adduction.  Ahh!

January - March 2012

I lost 15lbs.  I was running, doing core work, leg circles, kicks, and exercises I learned from physical therapists back in 2010.  I was gradually escalating my training, using gymnastics to condition myself.  Back-handsprings and back-tucks on the trampoline felt great.  I was in the best shape of my life.  I added in breakdance vocabulary into workouts, feeling out the very dynamic movements.  I added in more moves to where I was doing about 30% of my breakdance vocabulary.  But then...

January 2012

I was taking a class at my community college when a classmate told me had been in a horrific car accident where he had been revived twice.  That prompted him to pursue his dreams.  His story resonated with me.  It clicked:  I needed to breakdance again.

June  2010 - December 2011

I no longer trained.  Dance left my life completely.  I didn't know it at the time, but I was depressed.  The hernia symptoms subsided completely.  I lived a normal life, commuting to work, occasionally hitting the gym, etc.  My sports hernia was a non issue.

June  2010

I was definitively told by my sports medicine doctor at UCLA that I had a sports hernia.  I had never heard of it before.  This was a transitional time for me.  Discouraged by the injury, after graduating from UCLA I moved 350 miles away to San Francisco and started working in the corporate world.

 Late May 2010

Little did I know, but at this point the sports hernia was on the doctor's radar.  My sports medicine doctor at UCLA thought I either had a labral tear or sports hernia, but there aren't good tests for sports hernias.  They're largely diagnosed by excluding other possibilities.  I was sent for an MRI (actually, an MR Arthrogram in this case).

March- May 2010

The physical therapist's assessment was that I require more core work because my adductor was working too hard.  I went to physical therapy twice a week.  The pain persisted.  Pain was worst in the morning when getting out of bed, but it was only about a 2/10.  One day my physical therapist asked if I had gotten an MRI.  This should have set off a red flag.  The physical therapist had expected me to be better by now. but I wasn't.

Mid February 2010

I went to UCLA's health center and no inguinal hernia was found.  I was instructed to take ibuprofen, use ice and I was referred to physical therapy.  

January - February 2010

I would go weeks without training, the pain would almost dissappear and then I would attempt to breakdance and the pain would return.  One day I went running on the beach, with no pain, but then the next day the pain was worse than it had been for weeks.  I was so confused.   Was I inadvertently re-injuring myself?  Would it help if I were to literally stay in bed motionless for, say, two weeks?  I needed guidance.

December 2009

One day after breakdance practice my left groin in the adductor area was a little painful and I had a few sharp pains while walking home.  It was about 1/10.  Meh, that's normal I thought.  My body always had various little pains here and there.

The next day I returned to practice.  I warmed up, stretched, and attempted a windmill and felt extreme sharp pain in my left adductor area! For that moment during the windmill, the pain was 10/10!  I left practice, but figured my normal "rest a couple days and drink water" mentality would be fine.
For the next few days my pain was back at 1/10 or 2/10.  I sometimes had pain getting in and out of the car.  I had occasional pain while walking/standing.  The pain was hard to recreate on demand, but it struck about 15 times a day.