I Spent $5,610 Trying To Fix My Hip. The Thing That Finally Let Me Sleep Cost $179.99.

Last spring I finally sat down and added them all up. I'll show you the number in a second.

But first, why I'm writing this.

If the outside of your hip wakes you up at night, and you've already paid for things that were supposed to fix it, this is for you. Not because I found a miracle. Because I spent two years and a lot of money not knowing one simple thing, and I'd like to save you from doing the same.

Five thousand, six hundred and ten dollars.

That's not counting the pillows. The heating pad. The pills on my nightstand. The gas to drive across town twice a week.

And every night I'd still wake up around 3am with that deep ache on the outside of my hip. I'd roll onto my back, then my other side, and lie there waiting for it to settle.

I'm 66, and I've slept on my side my whole life.

About two years ago the outside of my right hip started to ache. Not sharp. A deep, dull ache, like a toothache in the bone. It was worst at night, and worst when I lay on it.

Then it crept into my days. The first step out of bed. Getting out of the car. Stairs. Putting my pants on standing up. I started planning my whole day around my hip.

The worst part was my granddaughter. She'd want me down on the floor to play, and I'd say no. I wasn't sure I could get back up.

My doctor said bursitis and gave me a cortisone shot. Honestly? It was wonderful. For about six weeks I felt normal.

Then one night I rolled onto that side and the ache was right back.

The second shot wore off even faster. When I asked about a third, he said they don't like to keep doing them.

So I went to physical therapy. Twice a week for five months. I liked my therapist and I did my homework.

It helped. Stairs got easier. But I still couldn't lie on my right side, and my nights didn't change.

Then a specialist. She pressed on the outside of my hip and told me the same thing my first doctor did.

Then the MRI. $1,100 to hear I had "some inflammation consistent with your age."

I drove home from that appointment and cried in the car.

A few weeks later I couldn't sleep, again. So at 3am I took out the blue folder and added everything up on the back of an envelope.

$5,610.

My first thought was: that's a lot of money to still be awake at 3am.

My second thought made me angrier. None of these people were wrong, exactly. Every one of them helped a little. So why was I still here?

The next morning I started reading. I typed "outside hip pain shot wore off" and went down the rabbit hole.

That's where I learned the words nobody had said to me in two years: gluteal tendinopathy.

It's a problem with the tendons on the outside of your hip, the strong bands that attach your buttock muscles to your thigh bone. It often gets called bursitis. But the tendon itself can be the part that hurts. And it's especially common in women after menopause.

Here's what finally made it click for me.

Everything in my folder was working on the pain. Nothing was working on the tendon.

Think of a smoke alarm going off. A cortisone shot is like taking the batteries out. The noise stops, and that feels great. But whatever set it off is still there.

My MRI found inflammation. That was the alarm. The weak, irritated tendon underneath was what kept setting it off.

And three things were making that tendon worse every day, without me knowing:

1. I was pressing on it all night. Lying on my side squeezed the sore tendon against the bone. So did crossing my legs, and some of the stretches I was doing at home.

2. It stayed irritated. A sore tendon flares up easily. Every flare made me stop moving.

3. I rested it weaker. Tendons get stronger by doing work, a little more each week. Rest feels right, but a tendon that only rests slowly loses strength.

And after menopause, researchers think lower estrogen makes tendons slower to heal. So habits that were fine at 40 can start to hurt at 60.

Physical therapy came closest. It was the only thing actually rebuilding the tendon.

But it was two visits a week, and it stopped after five months. Nobody told me to stop sleeping on that side. And nothing in between those visits changed with how my hip felt that day.

One article kept coming up. It described a trial run by Dr. Sarah Mitchell's team with 127 women between 45 and 65.

The women followed a three-part approach: take the pressure off the tendon, calm it with red light, then rebuild it with guided strengthening.

Two numbers stopped me cold:

Seventy-six percent sleeping on their side again. Within a month.

I hadn't slept on my right side in two years.

And now the approach made sense: take the pressure off, calm it down, then rebuild it. All three, together, most days. Not one at a time, months apart, the way I'd been paying for it.