Preoccupied

[pegkerr]

I'm preoccupied with reading and writing. I've been reading several different books, depending on my location: the third in the Botswana series by Alexander Smith (Morality for Beautiful Girls), a trashy romance novel I'm too embarrassed to even mention, and I'm also reading kijjohnson's next novel in draft, Kylen: The Moveable City. Oh, what fun! I'm just galloping through without making notes on this pass, but will go back and make notations after gathering my first impressions. I'm also busy writing and planning on hpalternity (some FUN stuff is coming up in the next month, including, about a month from now, a BIG change for one of my characters). So this is why I've been a bit quieter lately. Sorry, I'm boring.

The knee continues to be annoying. I'll sit for two hours, get up, and my first few steps are badly limping. Then, as I move around, and it will start to feel better, and I'm like, did I just imagine it? Then I sit down for another two hours, get up again and--ouch. I'm not convinced I'm correctly diagnosed yet. Yeah, the MRI said pre-arthritis, no sprain, but if the coating is wearing away under the point of the patella, why am I experiencing most pain in the side of the knee?

I avoided class Monday (sparring) and yesterday (the tough black stripe class) but I believe I'll try class tomorrow, the easier (!) brown belt class.

What I did today to make the world a better place: At a department meeting at the law firm today I inquired whether the firm would consider switching to unbleached napkins and paper towels (to cut dioxin) and investigating switching our electricity contract to wind-powered offset. We'll see what the powers-that-be say in response.

Comments

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

Off topic I know, but I thought you might be interested. Have you seen this discussion on Tor.com? "What missing scene would you like to read in the text of The Lord of the Rings?"

http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=16161#more

[moodyduck.livejournal.com]

Does this summarize your knee pain?

-inside of knee, maybe slightly above the joint
-hurts when getting up from extended sitting, but then feels better once "warmed up"
-hurts on stairs (up or down or both?)
-hurts a lot when a lot of weight is on the bent knee, like a squat or a deep front stance
-doesn't hurt at all when weight not on it
-feels like the knee will give out
-compression above the knee helps some, but doesn't fix it
-not a traumatic injury, maybe came on during some intense workout
-does not seem to improve over time

If that matches, then it's something I am very familiar with and muscle related even if it doesn't feel that way. Are you familiar with trigger points? If it matches I'll explain further. It wasn't until you mentioned the "just got up" part that it clicked that it sounds like the same thing I had. And it's really annoying and not something most doctors look for.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's it just about exactly spot on. So what is it, then?

[moodyduck.livejournal.com]

Trigger points are like knots in a muscle. this page (http://www.triggerpointbook.com/triggerp.htm) explains it better, but basically they are usually caused by overworking a muscle or sometimes a traumatic injury and while they often don't hurt unless you press on them, they can refer pain to other areas, such as a muscle to a joint. (If this sounds quack-ish, don't worry, if it works it's obvious.)

The vastus medialis is the quad muscle that comes across to the inside of the knee. If I put my hand loosely on my leg while sitting so that the fingertips are on or just above the knee, my thumb lies right about where one of the vastus medialis trigger points are. If you probe around up and down that muscle with your thumbs (or your elbow, since it's hard on the hands) you'll probably find a few really tender spots. Sometimes you can feel a tingling near the painful part of your knee when you press on them too. That causes the pain and also the signature giving out of the knee.

There are two key points for that muscle, one near the knee and one higher up. Then all you have to do is massage them several times a day, deeply but not overdoing it all at once. Again, the elbow can be good, as you don't want to kill your hands. Muscles with bad trigger points are also weak, and don't stretch well, so that can contribute to balance problems or in the long run cause actual knee-joint problems because they pull the joint out of alignment. Karate loads the quads pretty heavily, so it's not a bad idea to check the rest of your quads for trigger points too. If you have them you'll know it. The first time I show people, they usually about hit the ceiling. Oh, and they don't get better with rest--sometimes that even makes things worse.

The good news is you can do the therapy yourself for free. The bad news is that it can recur, but if you keep up with the massage even when your knee doesn't hurt, you should be good for training. The book mentioned in the link above literally saved my butt (and other body parts) in karate training. I can't afford massages or regular PT but when pain crops up usually it's in that book and I can fix it myself. Of course actual joint injuries are possible too, but this is easy to check first, and doctors often miss it.