Mud & Mischief

Finally got myself referred back to a physio who could deal with a fat lady. Feels like I’ve spent forever going backwards and forwards to DRI and the physio dept (pregnancy brain is refusing to give me the proper name of the dept at the moment). Started going in January, saw someone every week until April, then he admitted defeat and said he’d pass me up to the OPP (which I think is orthopaedic physio practitioner). That appt eventually came through for the end of July, for which we were away. When I rang to change it, the next available appt was September! So by the time I got there, I was waddling. And it was a complete waste of time going, as he took one look at me and said ‘you’re pregnant, can’t do anything until you’ve had the baby’. *sigh*

So had to get the midwife to refer me - back to the same dept (begins with an R, I’m sure), and a very lovely lady called Celia, who was infinitely gentle (wasn’t quite sure she was a real physio at that! - they’re all sadistic usually), carefully prodded my back, only once as she had to peel me off the ceiling after, and did lots of moving and twisting of my legs and spine, and told me I had Sacroiliitis. And hyper-something or other that I can’t remember now, but it was a really cool, long word, and basically describes why when she lightly touched one of my vertebrae I went through the roof, and even after she’d taken her hand away, I could still feel her pressing on it. After a few moments, the feeling developed into a deep, bruised sensation. Might go google later, but will probably get terribly lost if I do.

But googling Sacroiliitis when I got home was something of a revelation. All the symptoms fit pretty much exactly what I’ve been suffering on and off with for the past however many years. Don’t like the numerous cross-references to ankylosing spondilitis, mind. But we’ll worry about that as and when.

It’s also a tad confusing, however, as it appears to be one of those conditions that medical folks have widely varying opinions on. Hell, I even found one study saying it didn’t believe SI pain was ‘real’. Come and tell me that to my face, says I. There are also bacteriological causes, Strep B is an indicator, various viruses and the like can do unpleasant things to the multitude of tendons etc that hold the pelvis together - or in the case of pregnancy, don’t.

To cut a long story short, I waddled out of there with a giant tubi grip girdling me from belly button to the top of my thighs, and feeling a bit daft to boot. It did help though, although sitting down for any length of time made the bottom ride up around my pubic bone and the top roll down to meet it, which gave Junior a nice band of resistance to kick hell out of. There is nothing glamourous about being pg, is there? Ugh.