Functional leg length discrepancy

Our user asked: "A couple of years ago I was having a lot of pain in my right hip, SI joint, and piriformis muscle. The left leg actually felt shorter and when standing I could tell that my right hip was higher. At the time I was a caregiver at a nursing home and my job was exacerbating the pain. I went to my chiropractor who adjusted it and gave me some stretches to do. She said it was probably more of a functional leg length discrepancy than an actual one. After about a year went by and the problem didn't clear up, she finally x-rayed and said that I needed a lift in the shoe on my left side. With the lift and some strengthening exercises, the pain eventually cleared up. Fast forward several years. I got my nursing license, was still on my feet quite a bit but was not doing the lifting and pulling of patients that I had been as a caregiver. For the most part my back problems cleared up. I continued to see a chiropractor...a different one than before because that one moved out of town. Now recently I've had a lot of problems with my SI joints and piriformis on both sides...but mainly the left. My current chiropractor did an x-ray after several months of adjustments and orthotics didn't help. She did it with and without my shoe lift and was able to show me that the lift was evening out the standing posture of my ball and socket hip joints but was displacing my pelvis into a position that was pulling at ligaments and straining my SI joints. Her advice was to phase out the lift. It had already been weaned from 9mm to 7mm and when we went to measure the 7mm lift it was measuring only 5mm, due to wear. So I just took it out. I wanted to wean it out but I could feel the difference in my pelvis with it out...there was no more strain on my SI joint on the left side. However, now my body needs to get used to not having it, which is causing me to be really sore near my greater trochanter. It hurts to walk without my lift. But it hurts in a different place when I put it back in. In looking up functional leg length discrepancies I am seeing that many recommend against heel lifts and more toward stretching the muscles on the "short" side and strengthening the muscles on the "long" side. But now I'm confused about which side to consider the longer side and which side to consider the shorter side. All this time with the lift has made the left side behave as the the longer side, right? But when I take the lift out it becomes the shorter side again. I guess it always was the left side that is "shorter" (funtionally anyway). I've found that stretching my erector spinae and quadratus lumborum muscles on my left side seems to be helping. I've been doing piriformis stretches all along since those muscles seem to be tight most of the time."