Open Comment Forum: Anyone Want to Discuss Setbacks?

So I got this comment recently, and thought the writer made a good point:

I have not seen much detail on setbacks in the book and here. You and others mention them, but I am always hungry for more detail to help manage my expectations (do they last days or weeks for others? What works when they happen? etc.) I wonder if another Open Comment Forum on this topic would be useful at some point.

Yes, setbacks are incredibly frustrating for someone working to rehab bad knees: you're slowly getting better, getting better, getting better ... then all of a sudden, you slide backwards. Healing then becomes something like a cruel mirage. Will you ever be pain-free?

So, below, I invite all of you out there to discuss setbacks. It would be especially useful to hear from those people who successfully battled through them: How frequently did you find yourself dealing with setbacks, how long did they last, what did you find was the best approach to overcoming them (regarding state of mind, reduction in movement, etc.)? What caused your setback in the first place (if you know)?

Or, again, feel free to talk about whatever. Open comment forum! I'm out!

Why Knee Pain May Be the Best Thing That Ever Happened to You

I’ve written a post similar to this before, but decided to revisit the topic to share a new anecdote.

First, for those who don’t know me well, this isn’t some sentimental wallow that someone might expect to go like this:

You'll look back on your knee pain and feel grateful for it, because you develop an inner strength to cope with adversity and discover the truly meaningful things in life etc.

Honestly, by dealing with knee pain, you may learn you possess an inner fortitude, and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but you might realize the same thing after climbing a really tall mountain, and that’s what I’d much rather do.

Constant knee pain is miserable.

So how can it be the best thing that ever happened to you? Well, that’s conditional on two things: (1) You escape your knee pain (2) You become smarter about this complex machine you happen to be dragging around, tethered to your consciousness, that you call your body.

I feel that I scored big on (1) and (2) both, so I’m a pretty lucky guy.

What does (2) mean exactly? To me, it means that, during your recovery, you evolved skills in playing “medical detective” – figuring out, sometimes with creative thinking, cause and effect when something on your body starts hurting. You no longer give a fatalistic shrug and say, “I’m just getting old.” You painstakingly try to figure out what’s causing your pain, and you experiment with ways to get better.

Now here’s the anecdote that led to this post.

A month or so ago, I noticed occasional sharp pain in the side of my left knee when descending stairs. I have to confess, I did wonder if the chronic knee pain that I thought I had beaten had returned. Was it possible that I was wearing out the cartilage in the joint through strenuous biking?

But the pain was on the side of the knee. It wasn’t burning. And it came and went, but seemed to be getting worse.

Well, what could be going on, I wondered.

It just so turned out that a few weeks earlier, I had started a new job that features long hours and full days at my desk. And, one day at work, I happened to notice that I was crossing my ankles when I felt tension, in a way that was torquing my knee slightly.

Not much. And the knee never hurt when I was doing it.

Still, I consciously forced myself to stop. Whenever I saw my legs in that crossed-ankle position, I put my feet flat on the floor and relaxed.

And I think you know what's coming: the knee pain gradually went away. It’s gone now.

The point is that's exactly why knee pain – again, if you recover – can be a good thing. You become much more attuned to your body and can turn into a rather savvy medical detective.

Had I gone to a doctor about this side-of-knee pain, I guarantee he never would’ve figured out the reason.

And if I had never gone through that miserable ordeal with knee pain, I probably wouldn’t have either.