Sad.

What I want to do most right now is to lace up my shoes, strap on my iPhone and Garmin, and go for a run!  But I can't...and it makes me sad.  This whole injury thing is starting to really wear on me.  I seriously teared up after physical therapy today, and not because I was sore or my knee hurt more, but because this slow-paced healing crap sucks!  It's been a full month now that I've been sitting out without running.  I hurt my knee on June 11th, and here it is July 12th and I'm still resting, icing, massaging, blah blah blah.  All the while I'm watching all that endurance that I had built up slowly slip away.  I was 2 stinking miles away from logging 400 miles for this calendar year and now...nothing.

I started PT last week and I am seeing benefit from the cross friction massage and the Dexamethasone iontophoresis treatments, but the waiting for the go ahead to even try to jog is killing me.  And it seems as though it will be awhile longer before that's even a consideration.   And a pretty slow process once I get there.  I'm inpatient and sad.

I realize this is a pretty petty and insignificant problem in the scope of all the things that one could have to deal with, but it has me very down at the moment none the less.  I'm very much hating to admit that Chicago Marathon 2012 is going to be a lot different than last year's experience, and I will likely be walking quite a bit.  Sad.

On a lighter note, I did walk in the Cannibal (time was 43:24 on my Nike+ app), and more importantly and exciting is that my 3 girls did the Fun Run which was their first race ever.  They all did great and were happy to get a bottled water and medal at the end.  It was crazy hot, even early in the morning.  I was a proud Mama : )

Injury Update.

It's been 3 full weeks since my knee injury and I'm still unable to run.  I'm trying really hard not to get discouraged, but it's been hard.  I've accepted that I will be walking in the Hannibal Cannibal next Saturday instead of running the 5K, but I'm nervous what this setback means for my marathon training and even my fall race schedule that includes a 5K, 10K, marathon, and half-marathon.  I'm so hoping I'm recovered by then and will be able to run those road races.

When I first hurt my left knee on the run it was very sore for the first few days and walking and especially stairs were painful.  I went to see my physician 4 days after the injury and he diagnosed me with knee bursitis.  He could feel that there was fluid in that knee and prescribed a Medrol dose pack for the inflammation.  The steroid helped and I was able to walk normally and take stairs without railing support or pain.  I was ecstatic, however anytime I would try even a few steps of a jogging type motion I would have a lot of pain and buckling of my knee.  After nearly 2 weeks of resting and icing and still not being able to jog without weakness I called my doctor back and he ordered an MRI.  The scan report confirmed edema, but also revealed patellar tendinitis and tendonosis, and hoffitis (which is inflammation of the hoffa fat pad within the knee).  So as it turned out it wasn't just an angry bursa, it was inflammation and degeneration of the tendon that connects my knee cap to my shin bone which is a more serious issue.  I was to continue to rest and ice and to take ibuprofen as needed.  NO RUNNING.  By this point I was going crazy not being able to run, but we had a week-long vacation on the horizon and I planned on resting that whole 10 days and didn't even pack my running shoes for the trip.

After that continued period of rest my knee was feeling great.  I even did some pool running where I did the running motion in the non-impact water and it felt fabulous.  When we got home from vacation I decided I would test it out and run a slow 1 mile to see how the knee handled it.  I had bought a knee strap that supported the area very well and I was hoping that would help a lot during the exercise.  I was excited and optimistic.  I stretched super well and did a half mile warm up walk before beginning.  I have been reading all I can about the condition and one article I read said not to push past a 3 or 4 on the pain scale when getting back into the activity that caused the injury.  When I started the run there was discomfort, but I felt like it was under the 4 rating so I kept going trying to find a comfortable stride.  I've also looked into Chi running while I've been injured and tried to apply some of those aspects to my form and not heel strike.  I made it to 0.85 miles and the pain intensified to over 4 and I had to stop.  This just melted my confidence.  My knee was hurting again with just walking motion and I was scared that I had just reverted myself back to square 1 and that the nearly 3 weeks of non-running rest was ruined.  I immediately did an ice massage to my patellar tendon which helped.  The next day my knee was achy, but thankfully not as much as when I first injured it.  I iced several times that next day and planned to call my physician back after the weekend.

Yesterday, Monday, I called my doctor back and requested PT.  My knee is feeling better and I'm able to walk and climb stairs without pain so I think that I stopped the run early enough not to cause too much damage.  He wrote a prescription for physical therapy sessions and I go for my first evaluation on Friday morning.  I'm really hoping that they can help me get this issue healed and me back to running again soon.  I hope they will give me strengthening and stretching exercises to do and if I'm having a tracking issue with my knee cap that's causing the injury I hope they can teach me how to tape the knee for proper tracking...I've read about all this as well.  I will feel better having them involved and giving me advice as to what and when is safe to try.  I don't want a constant cycle of 3 steps forward and 2 steps back with reinjury.

So I'm still optimistic but going a little stir crazy without running.  I totally believe in the power of endorphins from exercise and I've been missing that quite a bit.  Hopefully good things will come from my physical therapy treatments and I will be able to run in my fall races!