My Knee

So I’ve gotten a couple of questions about exactly what’s wrong with my knee or what my injury is.  I never have fully explained it on the blog, so here goes…

(This is not meant to be a complaining, pity, whiny post!  I feel annoyed and tired of complaining about my knee all the time…it’s just to inform anyone who’s curious!)

My knee slightly started to bother me the first week of April, following a high mileage week of 48 miles (high for me!).  It was a little achy/stiff, but nothing too major.  It only bothered me after a long run, or if I was sitting with it bent for a long time.  I thought it was just something minor that I could work through and it would pass.

Second week of April – it was bothering me more and more.  To the point that I was getting a little worried.  It wasn’t exactly painful when I was resting (but was slightly painful while I ran), but it just felt off and bugged me.  It was stiff on my runs and I just felt uncomfortable and sluggish.  That weekend, I decided to forgo my long run of 20 miles (I was training for a marathon).  I knew it would push my knee too much.  The pain just got worse, even on my day off.  So I reluctantly decided to take the whole week off, expecting to jump right back into training the following weekend.

That first week off of running, I still cross trained.  I swam some, did some stairmaster, took a spin class…I didn’t exactly rest up.  But I took time off of running.  My knee?  Still sore.  Getting worse and worse.  I kept this cross training up for a couple weeks.  By about the second and third week off of running, my knee felt SO painful.  I couldn’t fall asleep at night, it was pounding so much.  I was limping everywhere.  It’s all I could think about when I was sitting, as it was constantly throbbing and aching.  At the peak of my pain, both knees hurt, but it was mostly my right knee.  The whole knee throbbed, but the pain was more concentrated below the kneecap and medially.  Almost to the complete medial side of my upper calf.  Occasionally the medial backside of my knee also aches sharply.

My dad convinced me that rather than half-ass my workouts, I should just rest it completely (absolutely no activity), and let it heal faster.  This was so hard for me to hear, accept, and do.  But I did it.  For about a week, I did nothing.  Nada.  Zip.  My knee slowly started to feel better until it got back to how it felt prior to the peak of my pain.  Slight bugging me, but not TOO bad.

After about 2 weeks of doing nothing (besides upper body weights & ab work) my knee almost had no pain at all.  Then I decided to test out a run.  I went out super slow, and kept it to 4 miles.  Bad idea.  My knee killed for a few days, and hurt again for a while after.  After that, I rested up for another week, then slowly started to incorporate my cross training.  But it still aches.  Some days is worse than others, and some days I still have to limp.  It’s been 7 1/2 weeks of no running (besides my trial run), and about 11 weeks since I first started feeling pain.

As for doctors, at the end of the first week I went and saw my first Dr. who diagnosed me with overuse Runner’s Knee.  His advice?  Just take it easy.  He told me I could still cross train, swim…even run on a track!  He started me on 4 ibuprofens, 3 times per day.  His advice – not so helpful.

Second doctor was actually the dad for the family I nanny for.  He quickly felt around and said he thought it was a strained medial ligament.  But I had already made an appointment with a sports med doctor who specialized in knees, so I still went to see him as well.  His advice?  Same as the first.  Overuse.  He even told me I could probably still run the marathon, just slower.  Um….??  If me knee was causing me this much pain, I don’t think so buddy!

Extremely frustrating when all these doctors said I could still run on my knee, just slower, shorter distances, and listen to my pain!  Considering my knee is throbbing while I’m at rest and sitting down, I highly doubted that running was a good idea.

So that’s my knee story.  It’s currently still hurting – probably on a 4 or 5 scale.  It started out on a 2 and at the peak was probably a 7.  I’m going to try and see another doctor while home (hopefully a more specialized doctor who actually listens to me and answers my questions!), but I honestly don’t know what different information and recommendations I can get.  Apparently MRI’s are super expensive (as my dad said when I mentioned getting one to him), so it looks like that’s not an option.  We’ll see.

And I already have orthotics and high stability shoes (all recommendations for curing the Runner’s Knee problem!).

Sorry if so long…boring…whatever that post was.  Just thought I’d get it out there!