FRNY Pride Run, Butt Stimulation and Live Octopus Soup

As I write this, I'm just a few hours away from my butt injection.  I've been counting down the days since last Tuesday when I made my appointment, and I have to say that I'm really excited.  If what I have is really piriformis syndrome, then the shot will pretty definitely help it.  My friend Matt who ran NYC last year developed a nasty case of plantar faciitis just a few weeks before the race.  I remember it was so painful for him that he couldn't even run without being in agony.  About a week before the marathon, though, he ended up getting a steroid injection.  And three days later he was all healed... he even went on to qualify for Boston.  So I'm really hopeful it'll help me too.

At the same time, I'm trying not to be overly optimistic.  I recently came across this medical journal article that I found by Dr. Thomas Byrd, an orthopedic surgeon in Nashville.  Dr. Byrd states that he had 15 patients with piriformis syndrome who didn't get better after physical therapy.  He gave those 15 patients steroid injections and only three were fully recovered.  For the other 12, the effect of the steroid shot was just temporary.  Seven of those 12 chose to get surgery on their piriformis, and five of those recovered.  So the odds aren't terribly reassuring.  But I'm going to keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best.

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This past Saturday I ran in the Front Runners New York Gay and Lesbian Pride Run.  Since it's presented by my running club, FRNY, it's always my favorite races of the year (except maybe the marathon).  But it almost always falls on one of the hottest days of the year, and this year was no exception.  This year, though, the heat didn't bother me that much, since I had decided that I wasn't going to run super hard, and was instead to try to pace my friend Alison to a PR.

Well, we came close, but we didn't quite make it.  From the very start, the heat and humidity were pretty brutal.  I wasn't even sure if I would be able to keep pace with her.  I was definitely glad that I didn't start in the blue corral where I usually start, since I knew I would have been pushed to go faster, and that would have been ugly.

Despite the heat, and not getting the time we wanted, this race turned out to be super fun.  If you look at the picture above of us holding hands as we cross the finish line, I have a huge smile on my face.  When else am I ever going to smile after finishing a five miler on a hot and humid day?  Alison and I finished the race in 42:58, or a 8:35 pace.  It's about two minutes a mile slower than my Pride Run last year, but I enjoyed every second of that difference.  :-)

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On my weekly visit to Dr. Degis, I told him that Dr. Metzl told me to get a steroid injection in my piriformis.  Dr. Degis didn't seem too pleased.  He still thinks that my problem is in the ischial tuberosity, even though the MRI came up negative.  

I'm sort of wondering if Dr. Degis is right.  When I was at his office, he did all sorts of pressing on my piriformis to see if he could isolate the pain, and I wasn't really able to feel any particular pain in the area.  But from what I understand, the piriformis muscle is tucked way in the butt, behind the gluteus muscles, so it's not that easy to palpate.

Dr. Degis also used a new machine on me.  Some sort of electronic stimulus thing.  Now, I've seen Dr. Degis about a million times, and he always puts me in all these crazy positions to stretch out my butt.  But using this stimulator thing was the first time I felt self conscious in his office.  I had to pretty much expose my entire butt cheek to him, have him lube it up with this crazy gel, and then have him take an electrically charged instrument as he zapped all over my butt.  It was not pleasant.

I'm not sure exactly what it did, but the next day, I was limping everywhere.  I'm hoping that just confirms that the actual problem area is my piriformis, and the injection I'm getting today is really going into the right place.

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On Tuesday, I went on another one of Fatai's Budding Taste excursions.  This time we went to Sik Gaek, a Korean restaurant in Woodside, Queens.  This place was very different from the Korean restaurants in K-town that I usually go to.  First, they were blasting Korean pop music. The worn, homey feeling made the restaurant seem like it had been there forever even though it is just a few months old.  It felt like the kind of place where kids in Seoul would go to after a night of crazy drinking and partying.  My kind of place!

The most memorable dish of the night that we got was the Korean hotpot.  It came out in a huuuuge caldron, filled with meats, shellfish, noodles and vegetables, in a spicy (but not too spicy) broth.  But the kicker was the live octopus that was freshly pulled out of the tank that was just placed right on top.  When the hotpot came out, the octopus was still moving.  But slowly, everything started cooking, and poor octopus started to slow down its movements.

I don't think PETA would be pleased, but boy was it tasty.  I've never had octopus that fresh before.  And since it was only cooked for a moment, it was so tender and tasted like the sea.  I can't wait to go back and try the live octopus sashimi!