448 days to go?

Yesterday I finally accepted that my peg leg is a real issue. For months now I thought it was a soft tissue injury that with enough rest and weight loss it would repair itself. Well it hasn't. In fact it has become a daily problem. I was enjoying my brief, easy-paced trail run on the pancake flat section of trail, doing a short out and back, when for no reason my peg leg decided to show up. I shortened my stride but it only took the edge of the pain away. I stopped to walk, which did help until even walking included the peg leg feeling. So what did I do? I googled it...again.
Okay, so based on my extensive google searching, which I am fully aware does not equal even a month of real medical training, I can assume I have a vertical medial radial tear. It's the only thing that seems to have symptoms close to what I have. Searching "my knee feels like it has a peg leg" did nothing aside from give me some fun pirate images to look at. Searching based on more specific pain symptoms did give me enough info to discard the idea that this is an MCL issue. Now, all I need is an actual image of the inside of my knee and "bam" I'm all set. Too bad I live in one of the worst places in the country to get an MRI.
Now if it does in fact turn out to be a vertical radial meniscus tear I'll be super pissed at my previous OA doctor. He was the one who first saw it on the MRI I had last year but brushed it off saying it was too small to be a problem. Well after reading various medical journals it appears that he should have actually done something about that little nick, that it would rub against the synovial fluid and cause more and more pain as it grew. Yeah, it likely grew because nothing was done and I was instructed to return to my normal activity level-which has been impossible by the way. My current OA doctor tells me to stick to the shorter distance of 5km, which is honestly the best I can do totally pain-free, but after my last few runs, even that is becoming something I have to battle through to finish. It would just be so nice to know definitively what is going on in there, because I'm more certain than ever its more than knee OA, which is a pain in on itself.
What to do? Well, there are a couple of so-called options a Nova Scotian can exercise when waiting for the MRI triage system to call my name. I can spend my time running to my GP, complaining about my knee and maybe she'll call and the diagnostic services place and they'll bump me up on the list-maybe. The other option is to spend time I don't have driving to another area of the province, some 2-3 hours away, to use a machine that also exists only 5km away from me but has a smaller line of patients waiting to use it. When you're a parent and use your vacation days for child sick days, every vacation day is carefully planned when they do happen. So to sacrifice one because our medical system isn't managed well enough that the people who live in this city can use the machines that exist here, it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
My husband tells me to use my mother's money (that she has offered-twice) to get a private one done. I did this last year while I was on crutches and looking at the same wait time. To have her spend her hard-earned money on a test that my tax dollars already pay for also leaves a bad taste. So I suffer and wait. And wait. 448 days to go.

The mental over the physical

I forgot my running jacket, it was cold and rain looked like I would start at any moment, but I sucked it up and ran-commuted 5km home anyway. The peg-leg was there from the get-go but after a few kilometers it eased off and I was able to maintain about an 8:45/per km pace. As usual, shortening my stride and taking frequent walk breaks helped a lot. My quadricep on my bad leg keeps seizing and releasing without effort from me, which is kind of strange. I'm not sure if the quad is trying to cope with any mechanical issues in the knee, or if its overstressed or what. So far though it isn't causing any pain. Yay, more weird stuff in my leg ;-P
So, I'm now down a whole 20 days into my 468 day MRI wait. I read the other day it could be as low (ha!) as 200 days so hey, maybe, just maybe I'll get it done in this calendar year.
This morning I had some extra time so I squeezed in a Livestrong workout and I'm hoping to grab a quick trail run before picking up my daughter this afternoon. The leg is sore, itchy even, but nothing a naproxen can't handle. I'm aiming to just do somewhere between 3-4km run, an out and back on a pancake flat trail close to home. My diet has been (knocking on wood right now) pretty darn good. I've been super conscious of my protein intake and have tried to only have one snack in the evening. So far so good.
So I'm managing. I still wake up at night with hot knee pain and my knee can swell up in an hour to the point it pulsates and I start negotiating with myself about what I really need to do versus what I can put off while my leg settles down. But I truly think I'm doing the best I can with my crazy schedule and budget. Onward and upward!

Cracking 20km in a week again

Well I did it. I finally cracked over 20km in a week again. I enjoyed a gorgeous 5km trail run on Friday evening, covering the challenging "Jodi-style" portion of the Salt Marsh trail before circling back to the parking lot. I even saw another bunny! My legs felt heavy and sore though so it wasn't my speediest run to date. Yesterday I did a longish run of 10km (I know, against doctor's orders) with my dog Peanut around the Passage. It was bloody freezing out but after a few kilometers it wasn't horrible and my leg felt pretty good so we kept on until we got around the town. I topped it off with some hatha yoga later in the afternoon to try and ward off any leg soreness from my run. Next week I'll try for a 15km long run (but don't tell my OA doc).
Today I'm a bit sore generally, but I don't mind since it means I worked hard. My leg is giving me the peg-leg feeling off and on so that's been a pain in the arse but I'm hoping it'll die down before my afternoon run commute. It's hard to tell if it will or not and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do to make the peg-leg transform back to a just an achy knee. If it still hurts when I'm getting ready to leave work I won't bother trying to run on it. (When it feels like your two leg bones are crushing into each other with each step, running on that seems ludicrous.) Instead I'll do a Livestrong.com Stronger workout at home. It's something I suppose. I'm trying to manage my new normal as best I can and without causing further damage to myself.
Just 449 more days to go I guess until my MRI. I'm starting to doubt that I'll be part of that 50% who get in within 36 days since 19 have already passed. I'll keep plugging along and hope for the best.

Patience and Consistency

Alrighty, so I'm 2 weeks plus a day into my MRI wait. So I guess that takes the average wait time down from 468 to 453. Wow. Time flies lol. I wonder how much pain I'll be dealing with in another 400 days?
So I'm trying to keep my routine. I've been doing at least a Livestrong workout each day, if not also running. Yesterday I got in a beautiful but tough 6.5km trail run. It was a gorgeous sunny day and I have a whole hour to kill while my daughter enjoyed a dance class workshop. I took the toughest route on this trail system and it kicked my butt, but it was great. I was super stiff to start but after about 30 minutes I warmed up enough to have fun jumping from rock to rock and then enjoyed the more groomed trail that followed. The run showed me I need to be more consistent with my running since this route wasn't so difficult a few weeks ago. Dance competitions, a head cold and life in general has been messing with my running plans but I know with a bit of dedication I can get my butt back on track.
Today its supposed to be +14C so I'm run-commuting part of my way home. Tomorrow is supposed to be even better and with another dance-hour to kill I'll be hitting that same trail route again.
My knee arthritis has been cranky but not too bad. Really, I think that's pretty manageable at this point. It's this strange occasional burning/stabbing/pulling pain I get on the other side of my knee that's really the pain in my behind. My "peg-leg" drives me crazy and no matter how specific I input my symptoms WebMD and Dr. Google can't seem to decide if its a meniscus injury or an mcl injury. One involves arthroscopic surgery the other doesn't. I'm afraid its the former since rest and rehab has done nothing for my peg leg. 453 more days-ish to go. It's funny but its not, especially when the stabbing pain kicks in.
I wonder if I'll ever get to experience another 50k race or if I'll ever have another pain-free day again. Other runner's experiences tell me its possible but this big question mark around my knee pain is holding me back, or should I say, I'm letting it hold me back. Sucking it up is not always an option when you can suddenly wonder if you are capable of rising from a chair without collapsing. Yeah, when is that MRI?

Waiting on an MRI

Well, just like February of last year, waiting for an MRI in Nova Scotia sucks. It's bad enough to have knee OA, but to have some mysterious "non knee OA" pain just makes it worse. I am grateful though that my new OA doctor has decided to investigate further since finally realizing my peg-leg pain is not knee OA and isn't getting better with physio exercises or weight loss. Now I just need to find out what exactly is causing the peg-leg feeling (with every step it feels like my upper leg is pushing down on my lower leg bone in a very painful way-and it hurts to touch).
I'm whining about it today because I've spent the last 3 days in near constant pain. I've been taking naproxen but it doesn't do much and doesn't last long. So instead I troll the NS Wait Times website hoping that the 90% of patients get an MRI in 468 days is a bad joke and I'll fit into the 50% that gets one in 36 days. So far I'm on day count 6. There's a looong wait ahead of me if it's deemed non urgent or if some other disaster occurs in the hospital - such as another round of flooding - that causes delays. I could take my mother up on her offer to pay for a private one but she already does so much for me and my family that I can't justify spending another $700 of her hard earned money. I can wait. And wait. I just hope the pain eases off soon or I'll be digging out my cane pretty soon.
While I'm waiting I'm trying to adhere to my knee OA doctor's advice and keep moving. Since walking hurts I haven't been running much. I have been doing Livestrong workouts though almost every day, which makes me feel a bit better, like I'm not totally useless. The wait continues.

Let the waiting begin.

I saw my knee specialist yesterday. He has such an excellent bedside manner, it is truly amazing. He said it feels like the arthritis in the knee has gotten worse and he's concerned about my medial knee pain, since that's not where I injured myself. Thankfully he decided to order another MRI instead of just giving me pain pills as a bandaid. I'm looking forward to getting a baseline on the degeneration and finding out why I get such crippling pain multiple times a day on the medial side.
Of course I Dr. Googled it. It's impossible not to with today's technology. Dr. Google says the medial pain could be an mcl strain or tear, damage to the meniscus I "nicked", radiating pain from my arthritis (this one I doubt since the pain doesn't start where I have arthritis so how can it radiate), or fun-sounding free-floating pieces of cartilage that periodically run into the ligaments and soft tissue inside the knee. I really have no clue what the issue is but I'm happy to find out finally.
So after my appointment I went for a run. I had done a livestrong workout earlier so my legs were heavy. I tried not to beat myself up about my pace or my walk breaks but I did push myself to get in 4km before calling it a day. I did the run at my new favorite trail. Happily I was pretty much on my own the whole time, which was very peaceful. I even saw a rabbit hopping past on an adjoining trail.
I still plan on doing the 27km trail run in June, but depending on how quickly I get the mri done it could be a go or not. Around here mris are done on a triage basis so I could be waiting 2 months or 2 years if my case is not deemed serious enough. There's no way to know, you just get to wait by the phone and hope you get in for the test before you are too disabled to move. Last year, after I had cracked my kneecap, my mother spent the money on a private mri after 5 weeks of me hobbling on crutches. This year I'm in much better shape so I think I can wait this out.

Health Care System Frustrations

I don't know what its like in your part of the world but here in Nova Scotia our health care system is overworked, underfunded and understaffed. I recently spoke with another person who has been waiting over 900 days to see a knee specialist. I understand his frustration at our system as I was in his shoes just last year. If my mother hadn't stepped up and gave me the hundreds of dollars to have a private MRI done I would have been walking around with a cracked kneecap and severe osteoarthritis in my knee without knowing why it hurt (the crack was through my kneecap, so there wasn't some big long crack on the surface to see on an xray, although when you look at the bone on an MRI you see the crack went all the way through the kneecap without totally splitting it in two).
As it was, even when I got a diagnosis it didn't mean I got help. I was told the typical line to do physio and if that fails to get an injection. No cast or splint was put on my knee, I was told to take it easy and use crutches, which I had to pay for myself. After that they threw up their hands. My GP had me try a chiropractor, which helped for a while, but never really got rid of my pain. As some sort of last resort and in an angry huff my last OA doctor told me my pain was in my head and I should take a nerve pill. Well we all know how badly that went.
When speaking with this other person we discussed how many times we had both been to the ER because of our pain. Personally, in the past year, I've been checked three times for DVT and four times for broken bones. Each and every time I walk out of the ER feeling like I wasted my time since no one can tell me why I'm in pain. My new OA doctor says its all part of having OA but everything I read says where I have pain is NOT where I have knee OA. It doesn't matter, no one thinks it merits any further testing or investigation. It is truly no mystery to me why some people will drop dead because of some "unforeseen medical issue" that they were probably told multiple times "is nothing" by an ER doctor and sent home. After visiting the ER at least 5 times in the past year I've given up on my provincial medical system since they only want to either give me pills to shut me up or tell me my pain is in my head. So as I sit for the third day in a row with this crazy pain on the opposite side of my bad knee, I just hope it isn't DVT or some ligament tear. No point in getting it checked out since they will just say they can't find anything wrong.
So is this what our medical system has come to? Patients that are living in daily pain without any sort of help? Patients being told that because we're too young we can't get a knee replacement because they would have to do another in 20 years. So apparently we are all supposed to live in pain for 20 years before we get to spend our geriatric years undergoing surgery? What kind of sense does that make? Because our province doesn't want to spend the money and time on a possible cure for some patients they will spend the money on god-knows how many ER visits, pills and diagnostic tests. Lunacy. I see why a lot of people travel to the US where they will actually try to fix your health issue, for a price.