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.

Okay, what is THIS?

I've been sticking to my new exercise regimen and trying to eat as well as possible each day. I have been drinking more water, sleeping better and making sure to keep most of my exercises to non-impact on my bad leg, which is a nice break if you are doing a squat jump on one leg then only have to standup and stretch on the bad. All that said I'm experiencing more pain than ever. Grrr.
Okay, please tell me if this is "normal" for someone with knee OA. I occasionally get tibia bone pain at the top of my tibia (inner side of the knee). It aches and hurts but usually I can take the edge off with a naproxen pill. I get general achy-ness on the OA side of my knee that sometimes makes my IT band ache, but again, nothing a pill can't take the edge off. This new pain, just to the right of my patella (NOT the OA side), feels like someone is trying to rip something out of my knee. It's clearly a soft tissue issue but holy heck it hurts so bad I literally cannot concentrate on my work when it hits. Yesterday I sat, clutching my knee for a solid 10 minutes before it eased up, and then hurt like proper hell for the rest of the morning, despite having taken a pill as soon as it hit. It is so bad I am afraid to move my leg an inch for fear of making it worse. If I had to run out of the building I'm not sure I could. Is that normal? If so I think I've reached a whole new level of sympathy for anyone with severe knee OA.
So did I run yesterday? Yup. Believe it or not, it doesn't matter if my knee hurts like hell all morning. When it comes quitting hour I can still run without pain. Weird. For the past year a bad morning like yesterday would have had me hanging up my shoes a few days but now I know my pain can come and go at will, without rhyme or reason, so if it doesn't hurt at that given moment I can go for a run. To me, this makes no sense but it appears to be how my knee works now. My run was nice and easy, so it was a bit slower than lately, but still I was proud I got out there. Knee OA is teaching me to live in the moment more than ever.

Some days are just harder than others

I think my day started around 12:45am today. Between then and my 5am alarm I think I woke up 5 times either from a sleepy husband who kept banging my face with his arm or my relentless knee pain.
I got up and did a Livestrong.com workout. It hurt a lot. I pushed through the burning and stabbing pain and got it done though. Achieving a little victory first thing seems important. Today though was one of those days I could have stayed lying down. The burning pain is constant today and nothing is helping. I'm pretty convinced my leg is swollen since sitting in a chair is actually painful so I'm sitting with just one butt cheek on my office chair. It's day 2 of this nonsense. I'm going to get wild here and guess this is another flare up.
So I called my GP. She's out until lunch today, she likely had a late night baby delivery so I can't be upset about that. So to reassure myself I called and booked an overdue follow up appointment with my orthopedic surgeon.
I can guess about two emotional triggers that are likely contributing to the pain on top of the rain storm outside. First is my cousin (who was more like an Aunt) who is dying from brain cancer in another town. I'm expecting a call about her passing any day now. The second is my trip to my in-laws. Between both my daughter and I catching a head cold last week and a minor snow storm we rescheduled for this weekend. The thought of sitting in my car for 5+ hours (one way) makes my leg hurt. Literally. The fact I can't request we stop every hour for a walk break because my husband is hell bent on getting there sucks (and of course I have to defend my pain all the time to him so its not like I want that conversation on why it hurts today versus another day-if I knew that maybe I could stop the pain!). On top of that I have to choose between sleeping on a 20+ year old stab you in the back with bed springs hide-a-bed or a sofa since I don't want my daughter to sleep on the floor for 3 nights. I'll also get to listen to everyone else's medical issues while we're there for hours on end and get told how fat my husband and I are by his grandparents. I won't mention that there's one bathroom for 5 adults and 3 kids to share. My husband is also ditching my daughter and I to go party with an old friend and his ex-con cousin the evening after we arrive (gee thanks). I try to remind myself its only 3 days but if my cousin passes while I'm there I'll be grieving.
I'm the type of griever that just wants to be alone to cry at will and just be sad. I certainly don't want to be around my in-laws if my cousin passes while we're there (they are less than sympathetic) but I know there's not a hope in hell my husband will agree to come home early. The whole mess just makes me want to stay home and hobble around in my pjs. God help me through this BS.

Overcoming Invisible Hurdles

I am really starting to feel like I've overcome a big invisible hurdle in my running. For a year the best pace I could manage was somewhere in the 10 minute per kilometer mark. Even on my best days I couldn't move that number lower. Now, without any super effort on my part I've managed to get it down into the 8 minutes per kilometer mark. WTH? I'll take it!
So yesterday I managed a great Livestrong.com workout and a great 5km run commute. I had a bit of knee pain while I was couch surfing but it passed quickly and only happened a couple of times. It was certainly better than this past weekend where I spent hours in pain, never managing to get comfortable. It's truly exhausting to be in so much pain. By the evening I just wanted to lie in bed. It's not easy to not have control of how your body feels. But I'm learning that I need to take one day at a time, that there won't be some magic bullet that if I train hard enough this will all just go away. It won't. But I am learning how to manage it better, day by day.
This morning I got in a Livestrong.com strength workout and with every squat I could hear the crunching coming from my knee. It isn't just one or two little pops, it literally sounds like I'm stepping on Rice Krispy cereal. It only hurts a bit so I try not to load that leg as much as possible while still trying to work on that leg's range of motion. So instead of doing the full one legged squat I'll only crouch down until I can feel my quad working. Why not just avoid that leg altogether? Well, I have learned if I do that then my calf and my hip start to hurt, so for the sake of the "kinetic chain" I need to try as much as I can to keep that leg strong. Then there are pushups. One legged push ups are out and big leg extensions when doing mountain climbers are out too, and every time I go from standing to a pushup my knee makes a loud crack, but it thankfully isn't painful. Modification is key and I'm finding I can still get in a serious sweat session even when I take it "easy" on that leg. Day by day my friends, day by day.

Coincidence or not?

This weekend my husband had to work, and there was my daughter's dance kickoff show, and there was a blizzard so...I didn't get any runs in this weekend. I did however get a ridiculous amount of shoveling in! I also did a Livestrong.com stronger workout so I wouldn't feel like such a blob. Now, I'm not sure if it was the shoveling (I did try to take it easy) or if it was the lack of running but I had to take the maximum amount of ibuprofen both Saturday and Sunday just to keep from hobbling around in pain. As usual the pain just increased as the days went on and by the evenings I was just trying to sit in a position that didn't make my knee feel like it was compressing in on itself. Frustrating. To top it off I had to spend my one day at home cleaning all day since my husband wants us all to spend next weekend at his parent's house 6 hours away, blah.
The only bright side to going to the in-law's house is the extra time I get to run. No one moves before lunchtime there so I can take my time getting up and going for a run while my daughter watches their tv and my husband sleeps (unless my sister in-law shows up with her kids, then its a three ring circus). Unfortunately after that it's all about visiting other relatives and spending a lot of time just sitting around hearing about their health issues or the latest family gossip.
So, after my experience this past weekend and numerous other occasions like it, I think my knee responds better to running days than non running days. On running days it's pretty rare that I need to take a pill to get through an evening of couch surfing so I guess that's something new to track. Today is a running day, but I also did a Livestrong.com workout (yay me!), so I'll use my Livestrong.com diet app and see if I can find a correlation. If it turns out to be true that running is somehow thwarting my pain I'll make sure I ramp up my frequency to 5 to 6 days a week asap (currently I'm doing a solid 3-4 runs a week). But given what I've been experiencing I'm finally looking up the race calendar for this year and thinking about what races I'll run! So far I want to do the Waskally Wrabbit 27.5km trail race (mid-June), the Brookville 25km trail race (August) and I'm toying with the idea of ramping up for a fall marathon at the Maritime Race weekend (September). We'll see how the next few weeks of training goes!

Bits of Progress! I'll take it!

Despite the fluctuations in the weather, I have to say, this winter has been WAY better than last year. I enjoyed a spring-like run commute home yesterday and almost had to take off my jacket it was so warm! My bad leg felt stiff and would get tighter as I ran but it never got to the point where it stopped me from running altogether. My lower leg bones also never transformed into iron so that was also a blessing. The frequent stop lights helped I think. To top it all off I even managed a PB (post accident) managing about a 8 minute per km average pace. Yuppers I was stoked. SO stoked I resolved to eat a healthy dinner so I made brown rice (I never make this, it takes way too long in my book) with olive oil and fresh veggies.
This morning my leg feels pretty good. I'm getting the odd twinge of pain but its nothing too serious, although it does hurt like hell when it hits. I often think about the bionic leg brace when that happens and wonder if it would help mitigate this pain. Still, the idea of wearing a thigh to ankle leg brace isn't appealing so I'm sticking with my current routine and finding out how far I can go and how hard I can push myself before I try any more interventions. Today I managed a 15 minute pushup/squat/ab routine (thanks Livestrong) and a mile long walk from the bus terminal to work. Later I'm planning to do the run commute thing again but depending on how the leg feels I might not do the whole 5km and just stick to an easy 3. We'll see how it goes.