Friday, December 26, 2014

Happy Holidays to All!

I ate a huge dinner yesterday cooked by my 72-year-old Mom, who is still an amazing cook. My wide-eyed five-year-old daughter described how she heard Santa's reindeer on the roof on Christmas Eve. My 18-month old son crawled onto my lap with one of his dozen board books and stabbed his little index finger at pictures of tarantulas and dolphins and panthers and told me what they were -- or what he thought they were.

The sun broke out after several days of rain, and everyone was glad for the brighter skies. It was nice to be on the leading edge of a long weekend. I've got a few around-the-house projects to occupy me and a leak I'm watching (the joys of owning a house built at the end of the Roaring Twenties). I think water may be dripping from the shutoff valve under the main kitchen sink. I just finished wrestling off the corroded, leaking faucet on the prep sink and replacing it, so this isn't a project I'm looking forward to.

So there's plenty of stuff to think about. But one thing I'm not thinking about: my knees.

They work fine. They have been working pretty well, in fact, since I published Saving My Knees. After I made the book available, I had a little nagging doubt: "What if the knee pain returns? Will I be some kind of a fraud, peddling a story that doesn't really have a happy ending? Will I have to contact everyone who bought the book and refund their money?"

But that never happened, thank God. My knees just kept getting better.

So my holiday wish to all of you is don't give up hoping. I made it through. There is a way.

23 comments:

  1. Hi Richard. Happy holidays to you, too.

    I will not give up hope. I will try try again. Low load. High reps. Patience. Careful water & land exercises. Patience. Write a "pain & progress journal." Eat anti-inflammatory foods. Don't take risks that might over-do-it and cause the dreaded Delayed Pain Onset even though I feel no pain or even discomfort during the activity. Patience. Envelope of activity. Focus.

    My good news today is that I was able to walk 3 miles slowly on flat. So. I am encouraged.

    I am grateful that you shared your experience in your book and your blog. Thank you.

    I am grateful that even though your knees are healed, you keep up with this blog and keep doing knee research and keep encouraging us. Thank you.

    Sincerely,

    ~ Knee Pain
    By the way. I am going to change my moniker. I've been signing my name as "Knee Pain" since I found your blog in 2012. But. No longer! Moving forward, I shall sign my name as K Star (short for "Knee Health Super Star".)

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  2. Everything was going so well until a major setback.

    Struggle on....

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    1. Oh no! Hope it's only temporary. Anyway, I hope you'll fill us in on how things have been going at some point when you have time. Cheers.

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  3. Happy new year guys!
    I wish this year I can really make progress with my knee pain. Had 3 PRP injections a few weeks ago. Interesting experience...I've had some weird type of pain that didn't have before but is part of the process of course... I've noticed some improvement, I'd say I'm 30% better than I was... Doctor said I will see improvement after a month. So let's wait. Also I'm starting my rehab tomorrow, will follow Kelsey's program with one of his consultants via skype. Sounds odd maybe but I don't want to follow the traditional PT and still haven't found a decent PT here where I live... Anyhow, fingers crossed! glad you had a good Xmas Richard!

    Keep in touch

    Athenea

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  4. With orthokone injections there isn't pain at all connected with shots(unlike prp's as I heard), and I noticed significant improvement in right knee pain level (the one with constant burning) the morning after the first injection. ( totataly I received 4 in left, 5 in right knee) . The year after treatment, with ups and downs knees feels the same. On a pain scale, before treatment 5-8, after treatment 1-6.

    Goran

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  5. Happy New Year! And thank you Richard for keeping this blog up
    I have greatly improved over the last few weeks, thanks to a combination of water therapy, physio sessions with someone who REALLY listens (the same lady who does the hydrotherapy), better nutrition, several walks at a very slow pace every day, better sleep. The TENS is helping a lot too, thank you K Star for the advice.
    Being able to go further than the end of my street, being able to play more with the kids, being able to cook food standing, all this is making such a difference to my moral, it also helps a lot

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  6. Previously I had been only doing ice for my knee, however, recently an MD suggested that after a month (meaning, after a month after a particularly bad flare-up/ set-back), I should try ice & then heat to encourage more blood flow to the knee.

    I am going to try it.

    But I am wondering if anyone else has thoughts on this?

    ~ K Star (aka Knee Health Superstar -- formerly known as "knee pain,")

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    1. Hi K Star!,
      I also tried icing but it didn't work for me well. Then I did experiment when I iced just my left knee and right knee was control knee (as in Richards experiments). Althgouh the pain was significatly reduced after icing, the left knee felt worse the next day. So I stopped doing that.

      Lately I have good results with switching hot steam room and cold shower in the pool. Also sauna works well. So I'd say give ice&heat a try.

      Jan

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  7. Hi Jan,
    Thank you for sharing. I especially like your observation about how your knee felt the NEXT day. That is so importsnt to pay attention to! I am starting and pain & progress journal to try to keep track of such things, too.

    Yesterday was my first day of ice / heat.

    The Heakth of my right knee is vastly different from health of left knee, so, not sure in my case that a true "control group" is possible.



    ~ K Star (as in knee Health Super Star ) (formerly known as "knee pain")

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  8. I used to ice my knees a lot before my current problems (i.e. when my knees got sore intermittently, not almost permanently like now). But then read that it can exacerbate or trigger CRPS, and as I was diagnosed with the pre-cursor to CRPS, quitting icing seemed like a smart idea. I do wonder if knee icing may have led me to where I am now? Also, my kneecaps are often cold with poor bloodflow anyway & I've found heat helps free them up a little when they are particularly cold and stiff.

    TriAgain

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    1. Hi TriAgain,

      It's me "k star" (formerly known as "knee pain." I just thought knee superstar was more positive sounding.)

      What is CRPS?

      At the moment in terms the ice heat thing -- I'm thinking I probably can't go wrong with raising knee above my heart for now.

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    2. Complex Regional Pain Syndrome = your nervous system goes haywire and sends out pain signals beyond what the physical damage dictates it should be.
      Caused by changes in the ganglions in the spine apparently, often triggered by surgery or a relatively minor injury. But there is a school of thought that icing may also be a predisposing factor.
      TriAgain

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    3. Hi TriAgain,

      Yikes. Sounds like your knee problem has evolved into a new problem. :(

      ~ K Star

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    4. Not really K Star. At one stage they did put me on medication for CRPS (Lyrica) but I weaned myself off it with no real change in symptoms. I did not have full-blown CRPS anyway according to the pain expert. I think cartilage damage/loss of joint homeostasis is still the main problem.
      TriAgain

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    5. Hi TriAgain,


      Well, given your experience and my owexperiences with ice, I've decided that for now I'm going to just try heat instead ice/heat combo.

      (I mean, in addition to low weight high rep exercises and getting back Into my land & water therapy and taking tumeric and omega 3 as natural anti inflammatories. And writing in my pain & progress journal.

      Maybe I should also try draining the blood from my legs by doing an inverted Yoga pose -- followed by heating the knees to get the blood to rush back in. Just a thought! :)

      ~ K Star

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    6. I don't know K Star. I've tried so many things and the only thing I can categorically say which improves my knee burning/stiffness/pain is not doing anything with even the faintest whiff of 'leg strengthening' or running and cycling. So I can do moderate pace walks (15-30mins), spend 7 hours wandering up a river, and even going (carefully) up and down steep banks/uneven ground (like today as I work part-time as a fly-fishing guide), do upper body weights and swim with a pull buoy so I don't kick. But anything more than that, forget it. I do also think prolonged sitting is a problem.

      I tried the Kelsey stuff, but my knees decided it was too much like leg strengthening = sent me backwards.

      The only thing I have not managed to do is completely avoid ANY aggravating activities for an extended period (say 3 months or so) which a PFPS book I got be Paul Ingraham suggests is what I need to do - but I can't make my life boring enough to achieve that!
      TriAgain

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  9. Ooooooh my gosh. I am so upset & frustrated!!

    As I mentioned earlier, I was going to try icing / heating my knees to see if that helped. I wrote that earlier in the day and then proceeded to do the ice/heat thing at around 3 pm.

    Ok, so now I just started walking home and..... Stab! Knee Pain!! And, this is the most severe pain I've had for.... Probably about 60 days. And why?? I don't know. I really don't think I did anything particularly stressful for my knee.

    I'm so upset I have literally stopped in my tracks and am writing this while standing on the sidewalk. (plus, now of course I'm a little nervous to keep trying to walk anyway since I'm not sure when another stab is going to hit. So. I may jump into a cab. Hmph.)


    But, back to the question of WHY??

    Is this sudden stab of pain due to my icing/heating earlier today? Or. Is it because maybe I sat too long with my leg bent? Or is it because I maybe walked a little too far last night? Or. Is it because the temp indoors was nice & warm and then I stepped outside where it's quite a bit cooler and my knee got cranky?? Or, is this a delayed pain onset from my low weight, high rep activity 48 hours ago?

    I don't know. There are so many variables. This is one reason why it makes it sooooo hard to solve this knee pain problem.

    Sigh.

    ~ A sad K Star ~~ formerly known as "knee pain" but feeling a lot more like "knee pain" than "knee superstar" right now.

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  10. Read somewhere it takes 5 years to master a pursuit, which seems about right. It took me that long to understand bike racing: the juxtaposition of my (limited) ability into real-time. Have been playing guitar for 2 years, so hopefully the jury is still out on that one... Next week marks the three year mark of my "bad result," sort of like my own personal Normandy. What have I learned? Well, I have two more years before I am a master, so again there is hope, but the cartilage does continue to slowly heal and yes I do have setbacks and like K-Star, sometimes for reasons that apparently escape my understanding.

    Am happy for Richard that he riddled the cartilage healing mystery (in my defense, I had an OS literally go ape on my knee, so my experiment is complex in a different way, although we share a lot of similarities), but it would be interesting Richard could replicate the study. You know, go back to the moist and moldy confines of that apartment in the east and do cartilage degenerating hill repeats and then have a trustworthy OS take a passive look-see inside, as I suspect that MRI's and X-Rays are often inconclusive, particularly early on.Then do some other testing: for allergies, immune function, biomechanics- To then limp back again from that edge with more data. Yes, a fantasy.

    What else have I learned? That because I believe that cartilage can heal and because that belief flies in the face of most OS' paradigms, that the very folks who are supposed to heal me, instead pathologize my condition. Try limping through that system with a heaping of crazy and ridicule on your medical plate. And I have seen quite a few OS' and sport-medicos and they do circle the wagons for each other... Except one. The last sports-med guy I saw, got so frustrated with me because I called him out on a few points, that he wrote my final diagnosis as "knee disorder." LOL, yes, battling that system and having an OS go unchecked after going ape on your cartilage will make you a little crazy. I pictured that gaggle of MD's giggling around the water cooler behind my back as I limped by. My point is, as an acolyte aspiring to heal your cartilage, in an industry that treats you like a degenerate and is geared up to insert exotica, you have to be ready for the experience. Think of yourself as an embassador for a new paradigm that heals cartilage. And I wish you luck finding a human being, being an orthopedic surgeon.

    r-x.

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    1. That is quite a journey. But. Yes patience is the key. Plus. If my pain & progress journal was more set up then I might be able to find some common errors the the time this happens and start identifying the cause. So. Knee to make my pain & progress journal more robust.

      ~ K Star

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  11. Hi guys, my best wishes for this year to you all... I often feel frustrated and losing my patience but what's the point if it doesn't change anything...it just creates more frustration and sadness. Anyway, I've just started with this (only 3,5 months in pain) ... So still learning, thanks for sharing your experience. I hope my plan for this year works. I hope my trust in Kelsey's tactics won't dissapoint me.
    I also tend to blame myself, I should have known this could happen. When dancing I usually felt my knees unstable and weird. I feel so guilty.
    Best,
    Athenea

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    1. Best wishes on your journey with the Kelsey method. I have his book and also got a cheaper version of the total gym that he recommends for high reps, so, I am optimistic

      I think that blaming ones self to predict this knee problem could happen. Plenty of other people bike, dance, run and don't get this problem. So. It's a bit of a mystery.

      ~ K Star

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  12. I have pondered my crazy flare up from Friday and I think the cause was that I had been sitting with my legs crossed in such a way that was putting extra pressure on my knee. I only realized this later when I when I was seated again and it finally dawned on me that I was putting extra pressure on my knee. So! Now whenever I catch myself sitting in that e manner I straighten up!

    Also. I think I am going to JUST try heat. No ice. See what that does for me.

    A more optimistic,
    ~ K Star :)

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    1. Hope that's all it was, K Star. Reminds me of a funny story (about myself). A while back, I noticed that the joint at the base of my thumb was sore a lot. "Oh well. Getting old. Maybe arthritis," I thought. Then I started thinking about how it was strange that the same joint on the other thumb wasn't sore at all. Neither were my other finger joints.

      So I started watching how I used that thumb. And it turned out that I was pressing the thumb against my backpack strap (I carry a backpack to work each morning) as I walked without even thinking about it. No pain or discomfort at the time, just a slight tugging sensation. Then it would be sore later.

      So I stopped doing that. And the thumb got better.

      So there really is something to playing medical detective. :)

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