I gotta admit I’ve been out of sorts lately, nothing serious…well, maybe a little bit. So, I haven’t run since May 10th, which needless to say, isn’t where I want to be. The left knee still isn’t allowing me to run or do other things that I want to do.

Yesterday was another physical therapy appointment day. I discussed with my PT that the knee wasn’t getting any better, despite doing my PT exercises conscientiously. I still have a fairly constant 3-4 level of discomfort with spikes much higher if I attempt to do more than walk and twisting isn’t too much fun.

Yes, I can push through to keep doing most things around the house. However, the discomfort becomes worse if I attempt to do more. I am not even tempted to run at this point, which tells me the knee issue is more serious than I want to admit.

So, from what I can feel and how much/often I am still having difficulty, it is pretty evident that my knee isn’t responding to PT, after more than 6 weeks of work.

The PT asked the usual questions and did some twisting, poking, and prodding of the knee. With amount of grimacing and grunts I was making, she agreed with me that it wasn’t improving. The PT said she would send the recommendation over to my primary care physician to start the next step of getting an MRI and if necessary an Ortho consult.

This is pretty much what I expected and if I am honest what I wanted.

I had held out hope that a miraculous cure would happen at some point over the last six weeks and not require those next steps. It isn’t that I can’t do the usual activities of daily life that most people accept, I can. However, the discomfort is constantly a part of my day, and a bad knee isn’t something I want to deal with for the next 20 years, if it is avoidable

I also want to get back to my active lifestyle of running, hiking or riding a bicycle for fun and be able to do more than simply survive mowing the lawn or walking the dog a quarter mile. Then having to sit down because the knee is bothering so much.

After poking and prodding the knee, we discussed my progress on the original reasons for my being referred for physical therapy. The hamstring and shoulder, which are both going well. We added One-legged bent superman’s and 60-second planks to the routine and discontinued the upper body stuff, as long as I continued lifting weights and doing pushups. Everything is based on what the knee allows me to do. We made an appointment for me to come back in 2 weeks.

She did put KT tape on the knee, something that I consider to be fairly useless, but she seemed like she wanted to do it. I think that the taping was more to show that she was attempting to do something to help me. It fell off when I showered a couple of hours later. TheWife agreed that I needed the shower a lot more than the KT tape on my knee. 🤪

I know that there isn’t a lot the PT can do for me, if there is actual damage inside the knee. Other than to work on making me stronger, so that if I do need surgery, I can get back to doing things quicker, once rehab from it starts.

For now, I am in that limbo where I don’t know what is happening next, other than the knee is not improving.

The other side of the coin is if there isn’t enough damage in the knee for surgery and it is more a combination of arthritis, wear and tear, in addition to whatever happened when I hyper-extended and twisted while rototilling back in May.

What will I do then?

That might mean some pretty difficult choices for me going forward and whether running will be a part of it.

So yes, I am more than a bit frustrated and even a little scared because I don’t know what the future holds. There are many unknowns, possibilities, and probably a few unanticipated complications that I will have to overcome or at least find a way around.

So follow me on this adventure of rehabbing this old fart’s knee back to some semblance of fitness. Then hopefully be back on the roads as quickly as possible. After all, I have a new pair of Nike Vaporfly 4% that I haven’t run in yet, waiting for me to christen them, along with a pair of On Cloudmonsters (Father’s Day present) that are begging to be run in.