UPDATE - I'M NOT ON THE VERGE OF DEATH

Well, I guess I'll finally give you guys an update. I got my results from the blood work about two weeks ago. The good news is it all came back normal. And after roasting in the sun for a week on vacation, I'm sure my Vitamin D levels are good now too. So no weird auto-immune thing or early MS or something crazy like that. Not even my self diagnosis of arthritis! Drat! So the mystery continues.

One thing I did notice though is once I stopped doing the PT, I felt immediately better. I haven't done PT for almost a month now and I've felt almost back to normal. I haven't done much exercise either, other than general walking, but it's nice to feel normal. It took about a week after I stopped for it to really kick in, but I am able to walk down stairs now and my knees feel almost back to normal. I've even been able to do a couple very minor physical things, like walk around Hershey Park all day, walk 18 holes of golf, etc. and have nary a complaint from the legs.

Now, if I were to go on a three mile run or something I would probably feel it. However, after discussing with the sports injury doctor, we are going to try a new approach. Since we haven't determined the cause yet, I could have just really irritated the "tissue" (I forget what it is called) behind the knee. It could have caused a lot of my symptoms and it takes a while to "flare down" after being irritated, and the PT kept irritating it. I think the random muscle pain was throwing off both the PT and sports injury guy, but I think that may have been from really overcompensating for my knees. I honestly don't know. Maybe some of it WAS the muscle weakness my PT worked on and if I were to go back to activity those symptoms would be gone.

I'm not going to start doing anything though until I know for sure my knees are better. And while I feel almost back to normal, I can tell they are still a little irritated. I'll rest until next spring if I have to. I'm honestly in no rush. So the goal now is to just rest. I'm not opposed to going on a walk or playing golf or whatever, but I'm not going to force myself to be active when it could be hindering my recovery. I'll just eat a little less and call it good. My pants still fit exactly the same as they did a month ago, so we'll call that a win.

So that's the update. I really do miss running at times, but overall I'm okay taking some time off. I've always wanted an excuse, and now I have it. I really hope I can run again at some point, I love the races and the social aspect, so we'll see where this goes! For now though, just enjoying not being in chronic pain.

PT UPDATE... ONTO BLOOD WORK

Updated self portrait.

Well, turns out there is not much to write about on a running blog when you are not running. I will write the recap of the 5k I did with Brandon a few weeks ago. In the meantime, I'll give you an update on my physical therapy and trying to get back to running.

Basically, the physical therapy isn't working. All the muscle groups we were targeting were getting noticeably stronger and yet I was having the same issues. The fact that I haven't been running at all for three months now (spare that one run with Brandon) and that I am still getting the weird leg stuff is eye opening. I thought if I stopped running it would basically go away (until I ran again). That seemed to be the result when I would take breaks earlier.

Well, I'll get super sore for practically no reason now. My calves, hamstrings, quads, and glutes often will get way tighter than they should with any physical activity. However, when I am doing nothing my knees also flare up. They are just swollen and sore feeling. It hurts to walk down an incline or walk down stairs. If I "warm them up" they feel okay, but I still don't have the mobility or agility I should have as a 29 year old. Basically, my PT is stumped. I don't blame her.

So I've been referred to a sports injury doctor who specializes in leg crap. Basically he agrees with the PT and would have done the same thing. However, now that PT has been shown to not really be working, we have to dig deeper. And that includes a lot of blood tests. So I'm currently awaiting the results of those. Hopefully it's nothing fucked up. The doctor didn't say anything, but arthritis kind of hits some of the right notes. Which would be pretty fucked up! So hopefully it's not that! Hopefully it is some sort of deficiency/imbalance in my iron or Vitamin D or electrolytes or something. He made it sound like he was leaning that way as opposed to anything more "major" (probably to not scare me off and make sure I come back) so hopefully that's the case.

Anyways, I'll probably get the results sometime later this week. We'll see what happens!