Actually my hematoma looks less like a tomato and more like nothing, but I couldn’t resist the post title. This is sort of a longish story that started about three weeks ago. I initially thought I had been bitten by a spider. I have a bump on my upper thigh that ached like a cramp. I started to question the spider bite theory when I didn’t see a puncture point or bite mark of any kind. It was about the size of a silver dollar and it wasn’t discolored at all. Weird. My next thought was maybe I had bruised myself carrying my sax stand in my bag on the bus as it is quite pokey and the one leg was sticking out in the same location as my bump. I stopped running for a week and it seemed to go away.

So once again (as has been my pattern of late) I started running again. I did a couple of base runs in a row that felt pretty good. Then I decided to work my butt off in the yard for a couple of days. Not only did the yard look great, but my bump returned with a vengeance. This time it appeared to be larger and more painful so once again I stopped running (and yard work for that matter). I decided that my lump was some sort of thigh strain. Seeing as how I have been dealing with some odd cramping and strains in various areas of my legs (due I think to overcompensating for one leg’s issue the other would pay the price) I figured this was related. I decided that I would give running a couple of weeks off before I tried again.

After going to my acupuncturist I got a bit more concerned. The lump was about the same size as the second go around (a bit larger than a silver dollar), but I had considerable redness and pain surrounding it. I decided to call my GP and set up an appt. He was concerned enough by it to call my neurologist to see if she had seen any sort of reaction to the rebif injections that was similar. He ordered antibiotics for the infection and an ultrasound to get a better look at it. Well the neurologist said no, she had never seen anything like this as far as site reactions go and the ultrasound revealed that the lump was a hematoma. The doc theorized that the running had caused it to fill up again with blood after the initial reduction. The weird thing to me was that this collection of blood in my body was not red or bruised at all like many hematomas are. I am still not sure why. You can get them inside your muscles and those don’t appear bruised, but mine seemed to be on top of the muscle. Weird.

Later this morning I got back to my GP. The antibiotics seem to have kicked the infection to the curb, but the bump is still there and still uncolored. It is no longer painful and it seems to have reduced in size. I guess the question is now how long will this keep me from running? Or doing anything strenuous? Questions for the doc I guess who I assume will tell me to stop running. I’d persoanlly like to experiment with it and see if there is any further swelling after I run. We’ll see.