Well, now we know

My family doctor had the MRI results and it didn't show anything. He didn't have the xray report, but he's concluded that the pain in my hips and back are due to.... arthritis.

Yep, arthritis. Another chronic, incurable health condition to add to my previously existing chronic, incurable health condition (metastatic breast cancer). Really, I was fine with just one chronic, incurable health condition - am I lucky, or what? I guess the best thing about this illness is that it won't kill me like the cancer (most likely) will... instead, it'll just add to my pain.

I'm happy that I don't have anything else seriously wrong with my health, but I'm not exactly jumping with joy here. Living with chronic pain sucks and the prospect of living with more of it.. well, sucks more. Sigh.

So.... talking to my doctor, one thing that I can do that might help is to lose weight. My weight is as high as it's ever been and I could stand to lose at least 15 pounds. Maybe even 20. Or 25. I've lost that weight before and I've maintained each of those weights so I know it's possible... but each time I've lost weight, I did it through a combination of eating less and exercising more.

Exercising more is tricky when my mobility is limited. Because the arthritis is in my hip, I need to be careful about doing weight-bearing exercises because I could just give myself more pain - exercising once and then being laid up for weeks isn't going to help me lose weight.

So I'm going to call the swimplex and see about one of the aqua-fit classes. They have a lot of them (one is an arthritic class in the swirlpool; that might work). Hopefully I won't be the youngest person there... and even if I am, well, I need to be able to exercise somehow. As I get stronger (and littler), I might be able to do more weight-bearing exercise in the gym. And then maybe the pain will decrease.