Forums >Health and Nutrition>knee pain - educated guesses needed
hairshirt knitter
Ok, so I had some knee pain develop 4 weeks ago. Not a sharp pain, felt more 'muscular' ache than a pull on the inner aspect of my left knee. Spoke to my sports massage therapist friend and he reckoned it was from the attachment of a tight sartoris. So, I've been rollering, heat packs, massaging etc. He reckoned keeping it moving was fine... there's no swelling or heat.
I didn't stop running and biking, as it wasn't too sore as long as I didn't get out of the saddle and could grit my teeth running. Needless to say it hasn't got any better.
This week I have done no running or cycling, just some gym floor stretch and strength stuff and an hour masters swim class at which it was not sore at all. I'm still walking/running with a limp though and I want rid of this.
Resting does not seem to have helped much, though I have only given it a few days. I don't want to stop training if I don't need to. So the questions:
Do you think I should rest it, or keep going if it doesn't get worse, even if it's not getting better?
What else could it be? No swelling, duration of non-improvement, not acute...
Going to the docs is not currently an option unfortunately, nor is going back to my SMT.
Snowdenrun
Not necessarily an "educated" guess. But I'd suggest resting a bit longer. Say 5 days? Two days is not really enough to heal anything in my opinion since generally one day off is used to recover from harder runs. A lot of this my depend on your running style and how much you run, which is where I stop giving my 2 cents and let others chime in.
Connoisseur of Cookies
If it still hurts or is causing pain/discomfort/limping then there's still something wrong. Rest until it doesn't hurt or cause you to limp.
Impatience is not going to help you. Not taking some time off is not going to help you. You need rest. And you'll probably need more than just a couple of days.
What could it be? It could be anything. Only an educated and trained medical provider who can ask you questions and look at what's going on can best answer that question. You've said that seeing a doc isn't an option at the moment. Unfortunately, that means you'll have to go with speculation and guesses.
Hope it feels better soon.
***************************************************************************************
"C" is for cookie. That's good enough for me.
Thanks both. Well, it seems to be on the mend finally. If it wasn't tendonitis, then I could only think of a meniscus tear, or cruciate ligament strain, but the symptoms didn't really seem right for those. I'm not even sure what brought it on. I've only ever had knee pain once before, and that seemed to be from a muscle imbalance making my patella track incorrectly - I had been doing more gym work this winter with the purpose of preventing such injuries - best laid plans and all.