Looking for balance.

Yes it's a cliche. I don't care. I need to find balance in my life. Physically, emotionally. The massive general  imbalance in my life is manifesting itself physically. I hurt my knee by doing something stupid. But the rest of my pain is different. My body is telling me something. Get it together. Figure it out.

Big Knee Pain

Here's a link to a good breakdown of strengthening / stretching exercises for knee pain. There are tons of different version of these on the web, but this is one of the better comprehensive versions I've seen. No pics, but they're explained well enough without any. I incorporate some of these into my daily routine. You have to use what seems to work for you and your body. The most important thing is to avoid anything that aggravates your knee. You'll only make things worse.

LISTEN TO YOUR BODY!

Tilted Patella

One significant step along my ongoing (and seemingly never-ending) path to recovery, was seeing x-rays of my knee at a visit to the orthopedist. One of the three x-rays that were taken, showed a view of my knee from what would essentially be the P.O.V. of my foot, with my knee bent about 45 degrees. So basically, I could see the bottom of my patella. What it showed was that my patella was tilted laterally (to the outside of my right leg), instead of being down the groove between my femur (thigh bone) and my tibia (shin bone) where it's supposed to be. Hmmmm....

So great! Now we can see what the problem is! Just tell me what to do and I'll do it! Give me the miracle cure. Surgery? Stretches? Chanting?

Well...guess what? It turns out that there are many possible causes of this condition, including that maybe my patella already had a tendency to be titled before I ever got on a bike. WHAT?!? Seriously?!? In that case, it would seem that taking an x-ray of my left knee would have been in order. Apparently that wasn't what my doctor thought. What do I know anyway?

One prevalent theory seems to be that there is a muscular imbalance at the root of the problem. For instance, my IT band (the muscle that runs all the way from the side of your hip to your kneecap) is tight or too strong, and is pulling my knee laterally (to the outside), while my VMO (Vastus medialus - one of the four muscles that make up your Quadriceps) is weak and not opposing the lateral force and pulling the kneecap back in the other direction, or medially (to the inside).

OK, so all I need to do is strengthen my VMO and loosen up my IT band right? Problem solved!

I only wish it was that simple. I've been down that road for months with little to no positive results. Leg lifts, such as lying flat and raising my injured leg up in sets, along with work with a foam roller to loosen up my IT band have yielded bupkis, even after a lot of work an patience. I'm still incorporating these exercises into my daily PT regiment, but I think they are at best only part of the puzzle, or at worst actually aggravating the problem.

More on some new potential treatments soon.

Re-Focus

So it's been about 6 months since my last post. The original point of my blog was to chronicle my cycling adventures. Obviously that hit a severe roadblock after my knee injury. It's been a long and extremely frustrating path since then. My father passed away, my favorite activity vanished and I had to constantly deal with pain, even in every day activities. I've been to a chiropractor, an acupuncturist, an orthopedic doctor and a physical therapist. With all of that treatment, you'd think I would have made tremendous progress. I figured I would have been back on the bike months ago and out there mashing with rest of em.' Unfortunately that hasn't been the case at all and in fact, I have little to show in terms of progress in recovery. 

I've also spent countless hours scouring the net for any leads on a cure for this ailment. As is the case with virtually every other subject (especially the medical variety), there is such a wide range of opinions on the subject of knee injuries, that it can be at the very least, an extremely daunting endeavor. To add to that, the knee in particular seems to be an especially elusive body part to understand. With all of the progress I seem to hear about being made in the medical world, I am constantly surprised by how little is known about the causes and proper treatments of knee injuries.

While this blog has been mostly for me to document my cycling related experiences for myself, I'm hoping that as I re-focus my attention on knee injuries, that hopefully some of the information I document will be of use to others who are looking for answers.

And unfortunately, even with all of the information I've accumulated, I'm still not very far along in terms of recovery. I still can't really ride my bike without pain, and often have pain even from the most mundane activities. That being said, lately I've been closing in on some possible new treatments, and once again I'll push on ahead and hope that they work.