posted
Isn't that a great name for a confession? I don't know what you'd be confessing, but with a title like that, you're off to a good start.
However, this is not a confession. Although, perhaps, I am long overdue for one, this is simply an update on a medical situation I have had for a long time now.
I've gotten into exercising over past two years now. It's just plain addictive. I grew up with every friend on the wrestling team, and I always felt profoundly inferior around them, not only because they were just physically superior but because they had gone through something (incredibly exhausting workouts [called red flag days] and a few championships) and I hadn't. So I always felt like the odd man out. Now, though, about half of them have decayed into normal people, wereas I am passing them up in numerous categories.
Except, of course, legs.
Here's the thing: last year I decided to finally get into cardiovascular exercises big time, stepping up how much I ran every day by a whole lot and swimming for fifteen minutes afterwards. This worked okay for about four days, but then I was suddenly inconvenienced by a blinding, horrible pain in my left knee that refused to go away. My knee was entirely locked up. I couldn't bend it without dispensing several four letter words.
I went to the doctor, and they made me limp around campus for about two days before finally coming in. She said I had IT band syndrome (the tendon that runs from your buttcheek to your knee is too tight and pulls the kneecap awkwardly across your femur) and that a series of stretches would fix me up.
I had been doing the stretches for nearly a year. And I still could not run or swim or play games. However, my hips and ass did feel terrible because I was overstretching them in despair. But I decided to brave the pain and scheduled a swimming class for this coming semester. But to be sure, I went to the doctor anyway, and instead got a general medecine doctor instead of a sports medecine doctor.
It was very different this time. They did not make me wait an hour and a half in silly paper blue shorts. He came in and asked me questions first for about ten minutes, whereas before they sorta rushed me in and booted me out.
Then, after looking at my knees and bending them, he said, "So... you did mostly upper body exercises... but few lower body ones?"
I said yes.
"And when you started to run, did you run a lot or just a little?"
I said the running had been quite a bit, yes.
He stepped back and laughed, "It's strange, because we usually only see this sort of thing in people who are overweight."
What had happened was I gained about 15 or 20 pounds on my upper body without ever conditioning my legs. My legs were skinny and feeble and had never been used to much exercising, so when I started to put them through the courses it was far too much stress on my knees and resulted in my patella being pulled across awkwardly- not just my IT band.
He gave me some exercises to do and I've done them for the past week and a half and I feel great. And he actually RECOMMENDED swimming.
This may sound silly, I suppose. But for someone who really wants to run and be active, sitting around the house all day is dead depressing and boring. This is coupled with how my friend whom I exercise with has terrible bad back problems (he has a slipped disk and overteight muscles or a pinched nerve or something awful) and it is never getting better, so usually when we exercise what we talk about is how we're not getting better and we suck etc, etc. But now, after almost a year of staying away from games and sports, there is now a ray of hope that I will, indeed, get better.
Posts: 2258 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
That's AWESOME. It must've been torture having to stay away from games and running and stuff.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
I know it may sound stupid, but I'm addicted to frisbee and for the past year I haven't been able to play except in random burst where I can't run around or jump or anything because my knees'll start acting hinky.
Posts: 2258 | Registered: Aug 2003
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