injury

Knee update

| cheriarmour

I have a confession to make.  I mentioned something a few weeks back, but have been pretty vague about my knee.  Some of it has been denial.  Some of it has been in the hope that with enough soaks, taking the Etodolac that the doc prescribed, and not doing too much on it, that I will be okay.

The honest truth is that I’m 100% freaked out by the fact that I may actually be injured, and I’m not handling it very well.

So to back it up, I’ve posted this before, but incurred my very first broken bone when I was 17 and playing rugby at Elon.

Rugby Injury

I fractured my tibial tuberosity at the precise moment this photo was taken, and as a result, ended up on crutches from about November to January of 2005, and then ended up in a lot of physical therapy. As a result, the knee has acted up here and there, but never really anything serious enough for me to be really nervous, and never, ever serious enough for me to see the doctor about, especially as I’m enrolled in a high-deductible benefits package. Going to the doctor all willy-nilly isn’t really an option for me because I end up paying for everything out of pocket.

A little over a month ago, during Wake County’s Spring break, because a lot of our instructors were going to be out, I subbed a TON of classes, and that was the start of some of my trouble with my knee. It was sore, and didn’t want to extend all the way out. Once I started physical activity, it felt okay (not great), but the starting, and the after was always really difficult for me.

I popped Aleve nonstop, had a run-in with some strong arthritis medication that resulted in a call to Poison Control, and bathed nonstop in an attempted to quell some of the pain, but it never got better.  Not worse either to be fair, but not better.

Finally, last Friday, I went to the doctor, where they x-rayed the knee, and couldn’t find a whole lot, since an x-ray really is only going to show bone.  In the case of a knee, where there’s a lot of soft tissue, it’s tricky, and I have to wait until I get an MRI later this week, then get it read to find out what it is that’s going on.

I’m hoping for nothing.  I’m really hoping it’s just some inflammation, and that nothing else needs to happen going forward except the continuation of my NSAIDs until I feel good and strong on my own.  My worst fear, and I hate even typing this, is that I’ve torn something, and will require a really non-terrible arthoscopic surgery.  But that whole concept freaks me out, and I’m not exactly ready for that.

Will all of that mouthful said…

What are you up to today?

Weekend Review

| cheriarmour

So my weekend started long, long before Friday at 5pm.

Tuesday evening, I stayed up until 2 am, getting my ducks in a row for work because Wednesday morning, bright and early, we were headed out for our Annual Director’s Retreat at work.  The day kicked off with a scavenger hunt downtown, and then we boarded an activity bus for Lake Gaston in North Carolina.

The home we stayed in was beautiful, and the first thing I did when we got there was hop on a paddleboard, and paddle around the lake, despite the fact that I haven’t really done it before.  But I’ve seen it done a ton in the tabloids, so I picked it up pretty quickly.

Lake Gaston

Because I’m still fairly new in this position (I’m only about a year old), I often feel guilty about taking time away from my computer and my email, but it was so nice to spend time sleeping, running, and paddling around the lake, without my phone going off, or without someone walking into my office with a problem that needed to be fixed then and there.

While I was there, relaxing, I continued to worry about my knee and hip.  I was resting (somewhat), taking a ton of Aleve, and hydrating, but some residual knee pain from this bad boy…

Rugby Injury

…which resulted in a fracture, some crutches, and some physical therapy, started to creep back. After I talked to my friend Google, and then the Physical Therapist, she told me it was most likely that I had a small tear in my right meniscus, and that I needed about two weeks of swimming, cycling, foam rolling, Aleve, and that the tear should take car of itself.

And there went my plans for a marathon.

I was a little disappointed, but relieved that I wasn’t making the pain up in my head.

Knee Brace

I was able to pull out some of the braces that Dr. Miller gave me when I was on crutches, healing that fracture, and make use of them for the first time in years. But I made the decision then that I would meet a friend who was running her first full on Sunday, and pace her for a few miles, and that was that!

Pho Pho Pho

After working the expo for a few hours on Friday and Saturday, I convinced my hubby to take me to this new place in Raleigh, Pho Pho Pho, since I’d been looking for pho nonstop since I had it from Whole Foods a few years ago, and hadn’t had a great bowl since.  It was AWESOME, and I was served enough to save some for lunch on Sunday after the race!

Race Day

The night before the race, I was able to sign up for text tracking for my friend Liz, who was running her first full in Raleigh.  When I got the text that she had passed the 13.1 mile marker, I started getting myself together, and walked down the street from my house, which was right between miles 16 and 17.  I spotted her, and we headed out.  My hip felt okay, and knee felt good, so my plan to just run a few miles turned into 5, which turned into 10ish.  Oops!  But I got to see my friend through her first finish line, and she finished her first marathon with an impressive 4:45 time, which was her goal!  And I got to test out my legs before going into a two-week break, which is supposed to fix me up.  Cross your fingers for me!

I had a nutty weekend.  What did you do this weekend!

Owned by a box jump.

| cheriarmour

I have been working hard hard hard, trying to get the group fitness schedule out, because once Christmas comes, I don’t really want to do JACK.  So when I got sick of sitting in front of the computer (which doesn’t really take that long), I hopped off my desk, and went over to the treadmill.

For one, there was this gorgeous tall leggy thing beside me who was running like a beautiful gazelle.  Now I am a lot of things – I leggy and tall, but I’m over 99% sure that I don’t look as good as she does on the machine.  And I completely own that.

For two, the gym is starting to get really really crowded, so the treadmills have started to do this weird thing where they sort of get overwhelmed and short out, so I was really getting it during Uptown Funk [see below]

I’m sort of addicted to this song – love the 70s theme, and once again, Mark Ronson kills it!

Anyhoo, so I’m really getting it during this song and the treadmill just CUTS OFF. I kind of just stopped, looked around. The girl next to me continued to run in her beautiful way, and I just tried to avoid eye contact with everyone else on the floor.

I finished up the run, and went over to the functional fitness area and did some clean and presses, dead lifts, and decided to quickly top that off with a little bit of box jumping.

Have you ever tripped while box jumping?

Just…don’t.

Mid-jump, I found myself preoccupied by something, and my shin caught the box.

“SHIT”

Of course, at that precise moment, I turned behind me to see who might have witnessed the foul, and my boss was standing behind me, mouth completely agape. Go me!

BruiseLong story short, my legs are just not cute at all – but at least I managed to sneak my workout in during such a busy busy week!

How are you sneaking in your workouts during this nasty (weather-wise) week?

 

Anyone else do this?

| cheriarmour

I woke up yesterday morning, and the left side, in the bottom of my back felt…crunchy.

I know that’s a really weird way to describe it, but it felt like I crunched something between lifting and between teaching a class the day before.  I played with the idea of still going out with some of the girls  from  Lululemon for our Wednesday workout, but by the time I went home and took two Advils, it was pretty clear that it was just not going to happen.  I was exhausted, and the slightest bit of tension on my lower back was killing.

And then the irrationally anxious part of me started to rear its rude, ugly head.

//What if I’m really injured?

//What if I never run again?

//What if I magically, in the time where I don’t work out today, start drinking Cokes, eating Twinkies, and generally stop caring about my health.

And then the rational (ish) side of me kicks in.  You pulled a muscle in your back lifting.  It happens.  Take a day off.  And reassess in the morning.

Am I the only one who gets weird like this? 

PC Time Machine

| cheriarmour

Thank you God for Austin Samples, because my girl over at Olive to Run posed this question on her Facebook page.

What is the WORST injury you’ve ever had? [running related or not]

As i described my worst injury to her, I began on a quest to find the photo that would explain the injury.

  1. First, I called my mom, who allowed me to break into her email to see if I’d sent her the photo from my Elon email, since I’d been at Elon when the injury had been incurred.
  2. Then I logged into her email.  No dice.
  3. I emailed my Dad at work.  Except Papa Cheri would not be at work til like 9am.  Okay.
  4. I tried to log into my Elon email, knowing fully well that they’d shut us out of our email like 60 days after we’d graduated.
  5. And finally, I tore through my house, looking for an old PC that I hadn’t booted up since maybe 2010.  The thanks to Austin comes in where I realized I had no cords and no mouse to use the thing.  I got all of those things, and finally booted it.

photo 1

Time machine much?

photo 2

AIM was still on the desktop.  And Marilyn was asleep in the background.

But the main event, the only reason that I booted the PC in the first place?

Knee Injury

The worst injury I ever got.  

::clears throat::

I played rugby for a short time my freshman year.  During this particular game, where my boyfriend at the time was watching from the sidelines in horror, a girl tackled me from pretty high up.  Now take a close look at my right knee without getting nauseated.  So when she did this, I heard a loud crack, and went down.  I remember the coach asking me what was wrong, and I couldn’t tell her, all I could tell her was that I was in horrible pain radiating from my right knee.  It swelled up immediately, and what ended up happening was something called a tibial tuberosity, meaning that a bone that sat at the bottom of my knee had been pulled up and off by my ACL, accounting for that crack I heard.  I spent the next, like 8 weeks in an ACL brace and on crutches, and to this day, that knee gets sore from time to time.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERASee!

Okay, enough of me walking down memory lane.

What is the worst injury, running or not running related that you’ve ever gotten?