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Frustrations with Knee Pain

This may become my new place to rant.  I am again left feeling frustrated for not being able to exercise.  I keep thinking about the person I was.  At least, the person I think I was.  I try to track calories and unless I am careful I go over.  When I was running, I never had to track calories.  It would have been next to impossible for me to go over on calories.  I miss being in my twenties.

I finally know what is wrong with my knee.  I have patellofemoral ambulatory disorder.  Basically, there is a groove on your femur where patella tracks.  The groove on my femur is very shallow (almost non existent), so my patella doesn't track.  When I walk my patella rubs on the lateral condyle of my femur.  This causes irritation, which causes swelling, which causes pain.  I received a cortisone injection in my knee.  If you are ever about to have one of those, they hurt like hell.  I would rather sit through my five hour tatoo again.

The idea for treatment is that once the swelling is gone the pain will leave.  Once that is gone I can work on muscle strengthening to hold my patella in place.  I asked about running and was told that I will probably never be able to run the way I did in my former life.  On the bright side, I'm not crippled.  I can still exercise; its just not recommended to do high impact exercise such as running.  The doctor recommended yoga or biking.  I don't particularly like biking but I will give yoga  a try.  Although the calorie for calorie burn of yoga versus running isn't even comparable.

 I do have an official plan.  Right now the focus is on making the swelling go away.  I'm taking 600mg of Ibuprofen 4 times a day.  I'm using voltaren gel 2-4 times a day, and I'm icing for 20 minutes whenever I get the opportunity.  This combined with the cortisone injection should hopefully take care of the swelling and therefore the pain.  Once that is done I'm going to continue my physical therapy exercises for leg strengthening.  I think if I attack those diligently for a month I can move to heavier things. After a month of physical therapy exercises, I'm going to sign up for yoga and continue to do leg strengthening.  Once my strength is up, I would at the very least like to start going on short walks, which can turn into log walks.  Dare I dream of hiking?!  Maybe one day I can even filter in some light jogging.

In summary, I'm depressed and frustrated, but at least there is hope.

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