The Good and the Bad

I tweeted this morning that I had a positive feeling going into my doctors appointment for my knee this morning.  There couldn’t have been anything serious going on (at least I was telling myself that) because the pain only occurred when I attempted to run and following that attempt.

I had a lovely 45 minute wait at the doctors office before the doctor made it to the room I was patiently waiting in.  Might I add, I have a severe phobia of the doctors office and hospitals which made for a very calm 45 minutes.  The doctor had a sidekick intern which made me feel like I was totally living in a Grey’s Anatomy world.  The doctor was great but I totally felt like a science project.  He was talking to the intern about all the different parts of my leg, how he can tell if the areas of the leg, knee, etc., are in good condition or not, etc.  All the while, the intern just gawked at me like I was some alien.  Anyways… moving on.

After a few minutes of questioning me about my pain, when it occurs, how long it occurs, yada yada, he didn’t even think twice about telling me I had something called Iliotibial Band Syndrome, aka, overuse of the IT band.  IBS occurs when one of three things happens. 1) You increase your mileage too quickly, 2) You increase your speed to quickly or 3) Hills.  Pick your poison.  My poision was #3.  The Minneapolis Half Marathon was full of hills, hills that I did not train for.  Errr, oops.  My own fault.  I remember somebody telling me after my half marathon how impressed they were that I picked that as my first half because it is the hardest, most hilly race that they had ever completed.

So we’ve got the good news in the fact that it is nothing serious and no further medical treatment or guidance is needed.  Also, I can continue to exercise and there is no need for me to cut back my physical activity.  The bad news?  Well, I can’t run from anywhere from one month to upwards of 4 months.  Tell that to somebody who adores running and used it as an outlet/stress reliever and it isn’t pretty.  However, once I’m healed, I’m completely healed and I can jump right back into running and build my mileage back up.  So there you have it.  As the doctor said I’m damaged goods right now; down, but not out.  :mrgreen:

My dinner was a high note of the day, too.  You would think that I’d be scrapping the bottom of the barrel for food around here and resorting to a package of Ramen that has made it from house to house, dating all the way back to my college days.  Luckily, I don’t have said package of Ramen nor did I have to resort to anything like that for dinner.  Instead, I made myself this beauty…

All I can say is thank goodness for my stop at the Farmers Market last Thursday.  We’ve got a salad that starts with a bed of lettuce and has the following toppings: green beans, green bell pepper, onion, peach dices, blueberries, cherries and homemade croutons.  We had a few leftover bread sticks from a weekend meal so I just cut them up to cubes and placed them in the oven at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes.  Nothing is going to waste in this apartment!

I also managed to scrounge up a frozen loaf of bread from the freezer with the butt intact.  Score!

And with that, I am out of here.  Last day of work for the week tomorrow and the family arrives from Texas.  See you later, gators!