Hip joint/groin pain for the past 1.5 years

[jpv110]

Hi,

I have been dancing ballet for the past 10 years, however I stopped dancing at the end of January this year. I've been experiencing groin pain for the past 1.5 years but just assumed that it was due to ballet especially as my hips lack the external rotation required. However, since I've stopped the pain hasn't really decreased and there are occasional flare-up's and over the past week or two I've been experiencing some occasional numbness in the lateral thigh (I'm assuming due to impingement of the lateral cutaneous nerve?). I'm currently in the process of seeing a doctor about it, I saw her for an initial examination and she decided I had bilateral inguinal hernia's and she sent me to get an ultrasound. I'll be seeing her about the results of the ultrasound in a few days however I very much doubt that they are the cause of my problems as they didn't account for some of my symptoms (which I pointed out but she ignored) so I was wondering if anyone could give me some other idea's of what may be wrong if the ultrasound comes up negative which I could suggest to her.

So information about the pain:
It's a pretty constant pain around halfway between the pubic symphysis and the ASIS. There is also the numbness of the lateral thigh. Pain is generally constant throughout the day however gets slightly worse towards the end, the numbness has only been experienced at night so far.
The position that produces the most pain is when the leg is lifted to the side (so the hip is flexed, abducted and externally rotated), however when the leg is being taken through it's range of motion passively the most pain is felt when the hip is fully flexed, slightly adducted and slightly internally rotated.
I'm not really sure what cause the major flare-up's, they generally last for a few days and basically any hip flexion is really painful, I often have to assist my leg with my arms if I want to cross one over the other for example.
As far as I know the onset of the pain was pretty gradual, it definitely wasn't straight away while performing a movement. I probably woke up the morning after a ballet class and it was slightly sore but being used to muscle stiffness I just ignored it and then it slowly built up from there.
There's often a clicking when I bend forward and also just random clicking throughout other movements. It clicks many times a day and very audibly, many people have commented.
There hasn't been any swelling that I've noted although sometimes icing does seem to help it.

I went to a physio early on in the injury and it was just assumed to be a tight iliopsoas (as there is definitely tightness there and pain when massaging along the inside of the hip bone). There she confirmed that my legs were both the same length, my hamstring flexibility as well over 90 degrees (I can lay my thigh against my torso in a SLR), I have a large amount of (natural) internal rotation, my external rotation is less than average, my adductor's were very flexible, I had a negative Ober's test, the flexibility of my quadriceps/hip flexors weren't as extreme as my hamstrings though slightly more than average (negative thomas test) and I have flat feet (which I have orthotics for which I wore the majority of the time for the past 13 or so years (during school, I had a uniform and the shoes could fit orthotics) so when the injury first occured I was wearing orthotics however these days I wear flipflops most of the time.

If I've left anything out please let me know and thank you in advance for any help.