Injury update

Unwittingly, I included a bit of foreshadowing in previous posts about what is ultimately a flare up of a condition called patella femoral arthritis. I think I've described it in previous posts, but the basic condition is that due to an imperfect femur, my knee tracks poorly leading to breakdown of the cartilage between my kneecap and femur. Usually, it causes me no pain. And then sometimes it flares up and causes all sorts of pain. Usually, at the same time I develop something called a baker's cyst caused by poor drainage of the inflammation in the knee. The cyst bulbs out behind my knee and causes pain and poor firing of the calf and hamstring. The nerve pain caused by the pressure of the cyst can be felt down to my foot and up to my hip. All in all, it makes for the feeling of an unstable leg and the impossibility of running without a limp.

Basic treatment... varies. You rest. You can have it drained. You can have a cortisone shot. Those things aren't permanent and the likelihood of recurrence is high unless you can do something to basically restructure the tracking of the knee. It's also complicated because as the cartilage breaks down, the treatments, exercises, etc. that worked before won't necessarily work the next time. I used to be able to "pop" the cyst by rolling on a lacross ball and all would be well! ... except I still had arthritis. In this most recent bout of cyst-li-ness, I haven't had success trying to roll it out. Stretching doesn't appear to help. I've been hitting the inflammation with lots of anti-inflammatory drugs. I tried a few different braces which definitely don't appear to help. Certain shoes help.

Anyway, rather than whine about it and get down on myself, I've decided to really pursue an end-game solution. I made an appointment with a knee specialist recommended to me by a couple of folks who have dealt with similar stuff. He's one of those mega-endurance athletes and "gets" runners and what running means to them. I hear he can do some pretty cool stuff that's minimally invasive. It's too early to say this, perhaps, but part of me thinks that if surgery could stave off further damage down the road and allow me to race competitively for a few good years, it would be worth it. Plenty of runners I know have had minor surgery on a knee or hip and come back stronger because of it. The appointment is Thursday and I'm excited to see what he has to say/recommend. And I'm really pumped to find out he is in my network and completely covered outside of a $20 co-pay. Amazing, really. I thought I was limited to the nice but generally uninspired sports medicine department at Lahey... guess not!

Fortunately, I'm able to cycle without pain or sign that it's prolonging the inflammation. Now, I'm off to Breakaway for a group workout on the compu-trainer. Probably won't be training Tuesday-Thursday, outside of standard core work, for this week as Day 1 of winter track starts tomorrow and I'm excited to get everybody off to a good start for the holiday season!!