Christmas and Kalbi

OK, I may have jumped the gun a little bit with my last post.  Yes, Dr. Gallina, the foot and ankle specialist, said that, as far as my ankle was concerned, I could start running.  But judging from some issues I've had last week, as well as a follow-up visit to Dr. Babiy's office today, I'm starting to wonder if I was being overly optimistic.

To recap, Dr. Gallina said that I probably just have a little tendinitis in my ankle, and that I could start running as soon as I wanted.  To be extra safe, and to let my butt issue recover a little more, I decided to get an extra week of rest during the Christmas holiday, and to return to running this Wednesday at the fun run. 

For Christmas, I went out to my parents' house, in San Jose, California.  Since I bought my ticket at the last minute, I ended up getting this awful connection in Phoenix.  Well, flight one landed about 25 minutes before flight two was scheduled to take off, and they were at two different terminals.  So as soon as I got off the first plant, I booked it from Terminal A to Terminal B--not super far, but far enough.  Well, by the time I reached Terminal B, I could already feel the tendinitis in my ankle acting up.  Not a good sign. 

And, the five hours of flying seemed to inflame my butt issue as well.  By the end of the first flight, my whole right leg was in agony.  And I continued to feel my butt soreness throughout the rest of the week.  The worst part was driving between my parents' house and my brother's house in Burlingame, about 45 minutes away.  Several times I had to brake with my left foot because my right leg--from the butt all the way down to the knee--was in so much pain and needed to be stretched out.  It was difficult to accept that I still hurt so much even after taking almost all of December off from running...

Today's visit to Dr. Babiy's office didn't help matters.  Dr. Babiy is on vacation, so I met with her colleague, Dr. Craig Feuerman instead.  Dr. Feuerman pretty much said that the ankle and the butt issue could both take months to recover from, and that I shouldn't be running in the meantime.  He acknowledged that Dr. Gallina said I could run, but that was just with respect to my ankle, and even then I should not keep running if I felt pain.  He agreed that the ankle was probably just tendinitis, and stated that I should be icing it frequently.  As for the butt, he thinks it's either a pulled hamstring, or a herniated disk.  As I mentioned here, a herniated disk is a frequent cause of sciatic pain, which may be the type of pain that I am experiencing.

I mentioned to him that Dr. Babiy performed an EMG, which showed no sciatic issue (and thus no herniated disk).  He noted that a negative EMG would not necessarily rule out a sciatic issue.  This is because an EMG is a "physiological" test--which shows whether I have symptoms of sciatica.  He contrasted this with an MRI, which he said was an "anatomical" test--which shows whether I actually have a herniated disk or not.  He said if I wanted to, I could get an MRI of my spine now to determine if I had a herniated disk.  Otherwise, I could wait a month or so to see of the pain subsided, and get an MRI in case it didn't then.  I of course opted to have one now because I am obsessive compulsive like that.  He also asked me if I wanted an oral steroid to help the inflammation go away.  I decided that sounded too scary and that I should pass.  Instead, I'll continue to take super doses of ibuprofen.  In the meantime, I continuing with physical therapy on both my butt and my ankle.

This whole process has made me feel really fortunate that I have health insurance.  I'm also glad I've found some doctors who are willing to perform tests to get to the bottom of what I have.  But still, it doesn't quite make up for the fact that I'm not able to run as much as I want to.

Speaking of running, so Dr. Feuerman told me not to run.  I guess this is against his orders, then, but I'm still planning on going to the fun run tomorrow.  I will take it very, very easy.  If I feel good, then I'll know that I can slowly but surely get better.  If I don't, then I'll know for sure that I just need more rest.  Keep your fingers crossed for me.

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I did a lot of eating when I went home for Christmas!  One of the more memorable meals was at the Palace BBQ Buffet in Sunnyvale, CA.  It was an all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ place.  For $12.99 per person at lunch, you get free reign over their raw meat bar, which includes kalbi (marinated beef short ribs sliced across the bone), lamb, chicken and pork, pig tongue, chicken gizzards, beef tripe, baby octopus, and and all sorts of other fun stuff.  And of course, there were all sorts of AYCE banchan too.  Yummmmm....

Here's a pic of one of the many plates of raw meat we got.  And a pic of my parents enjoying the BBQ'd goodness.

My brother and his wife had us over for Christmas dinner this year.  The picture below is just a tiny snippet of everything that they made.  Four salads: Japanese seaweed, mung bean sprouts, cucumber, and green papaya.  A fish ball and cucumber soup.  Sticky rice with Chinese sausage.  Green beans with pork.  Oysters two ways (raw, and steamed with black bean sauce).  And a few steamed dungeness crabs.  Oh, and a prime rib roast.  All very tasty.