The physical therapists at CHW are finally getting to the bottom (pardon the pun) of my leg and hip problems.

Imagine if you will a chair. An office chair. It’s fairly ergonomic, but unbeknownst to most novices, this chair was constructed for the comfort of people five foot four and taller. If you are shorter than that, as I am, this chair will damage your body slowly, over a long period of time. If you are short, like me, no matter what you do, you will never be able to sit correctly in this chair, as your feet will always dangle, just a weeee bit from the floor. Only a couple inches! Just enough so that you think you can accommodate for it by crossing your ankles, shifting your weight to one hip, and otherwise adapting as best you can as you sit for hours in this chair, hunched before a screen, for about six years.

Also keep in mind, this entire country and the structures within it are designed to accommodate adults who are five-four or taller. Train seats, movie seats, and pretty much all chairs sold anywhere for anything. In restaurants, cafes, even toilets, built for, well…. Men.

So you’re sitting in this too-tall chair, resting weight on one hip, straining to reach the floor somehow, locking a foot behind an ankle. Unaware of a problem because it doesn’t hurt (yet) and this is how it has always been. But there is a problem.

The upper leg is full of tendons, the largest of which are the hamstrings and the IT band, which traverses the side of the thigh. When the feet do not rest on the floor, these tendons (and the quadricep muscles) must then work constantly to hold up the lower leg. They pull and pull until they are as tight as drums. They become hardened, shortened, full of scar tissue. But don’t really hurt, yet. My it bands are like guitar strings. They are sensitive to the touch.

Another part of my body that is in pain is less talked about. I didn’t even know about it until a couple months ago. It is the periformus muscle, a layer of muscle that lies underneath the gluteals and near the sit bones. It’s buried deeply, and running alongside it down the back of the buttocks is the sciatic nerve. In 85% of the populace, this nerve is located either in front of or behind the periformus. In 15% of the populace, it runs directly through the muscle itself. Guess which group I belong to! That’s right. I have a pain in my ass.

So there I sat in my chair, balanced on one cheek, for years, making tendons harder, quads incredibly tight. No back support, either, I might add, since the base of my seat was at the depth for a person with longer thigh bones. The periformus became constantly contracted too, because of all the tension below it and in my hips. And this tightness in the periformus irritated the hell out of my sciatic nerve, and still does. My right hip torqued a few inches out of alignment. I was all messed up, and the pain began to present itself in the winter via a sharp stabbing sensation in the left hip and sacrum when I walked, and pain in my kneecaps (quads attach to kneecap tendons).

It took so damn long to get to this diagnosis. I still do not have a chair that works for me, who knows if one even exists. What can I do, I have short legs. I’m a short girl, not a midget. There are millions of people the same height as me, admittedly they mostly live in Asia, where people are allowed to sit upon the floor and develop strong backs. I have to deal with this for the rest of my life, everywhere I go. The best I can do is to stretch, sit on the floor, exercise, and keep my leg tendons flexible and loose. The world won’t accommodate for my height, I already know that just going to buy pants.

Anyway. In other news, I found a Weber grill on craigslist yesterday for $25. It cam with ten pounds of charcoal. We are so going to have turkey burgers tonight cooked over a flame. Mmmmm!!