Last Friday I went out to the local watering hole with a few of my fellow academic colleagues. At the end of the night we proceeded to go outside and catch a cab to our respective homes. Unfortunately, there wasn't a cab in sight. In hindsight I'm SURE there would have been another one had we waited, oh, 2 minutes. But alas, I was out with people on the track team. And since I don't live more than a mile from the bar they decided we would run home because it was like 20 degrees outside. I was totally against running because 1. I can easily handle the cold (no, not because of my beer over coat), 2. I didn't feel like making a scene by having 5 white preppy guys running through the ghetto, 3. running without arch supports is a bad idea for someone with terribly flat feet.
Needless to say, we ran. Within the first 10 steps I immediately regretted this. But I toughed it out. I generally have a pretty high tolerance for pain, and lets not forget that my pain threshold was most likely elevated due to the nights activities. By the time we got to my apartment I could barely stand. My left knee (lateral) was killing me.
The next couple of days were pretty rough. I wore my arch supports everywhere I went - including my Science Prom which was the next day. Boy were those dress shoes snug. By Monday or Tuesday I wasn't having that much pain anymore, and today I had absolutely no pain at any point of the day. Last night I even did some weightless weight-training (that's not a typo) and there was no problem at all. Today I hit the gym and started doing my typical running routine. If I had to sum that up in one word, I would choose, "ouch." If I had 4 words at my disposal I would say, "THAT MOTHER FUCKING SMARTS!!!" I decided to nix the running and instead did a painless granny power walk for double the amount of time.
I decided to look up some possible diagnoses for my problem. I came to two likely problems. The better of the two is an IT-band irritation. The worse of the two a torn meniscus. There didn't seem to be any home tests to do to diagnosis an IT-band problem. But for the meniscus they said if you hold your hand against the sides of the knee and feel a "popping," it could be a meniscus problem. So I did such, and felt a definitive protrusion, which may be considered a "popping." To double check I did the same thing to my other knee, which doesn't hurt. Nothing. There is a definite difference between the knees.
This sucks.
My plan of action is to give it a full week of no high impact exercise, which is going to really piss me off, since I just got into this running thing. If the "popping" doesn't seem to improve, and/or running still hurts I guess I'll have to schedule an orthopedist appointment. But my school also has an athletic training program, and I know that there is a class in the Vertebrate Physiology lab tomorrow. I plan on going there after class pretending to do work in the lab and in passing ask them for their insight. I'm sure glad I struck up conversation with the instructor earlier in the semester.
As for the title of the post, my family on my dad's side has notoriously horrible knees and I very much take after my dad's side. Until now I never had any problems, which is probably due to the fact that I was all that much into sports when I was younger. Regardless, I guarantee the first words out of my mom's mouth is, "Yep, those are father's family's genes for you." She blames all biological problems on them. Personally I'd rather their issues than her side's.
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