Knee Diagnosis

So, I saw the sports med doctor today. He was HOT, btw, although after talking to him for a couple of minutes I failed to be impressed.

Anyway, they x-rayed my knees and ankles. That didn't show soft tissue, obviously, so I didn't learn anything about the state of my cartilage, but the doc didn't seem concerned about that when I asked. After being poked and palpated and rotated for a while, he told me that I have iliotibial band syndrome (aka "runner's knee") in one leg and patellar tendinitis (aka "jumper's knee") in the other one. My, aren't I versatile.

So it looks like they won't have to amputate. The dx wasn't the most joyful news ever, but it's a relief to know that I'm not walking around with a partially torn ACL or something BUT to also be validated that the pain is real and has an actual cause. I mentioned my AN history but he didn't ask any questions about my current exercise and even said that I shouldn't have to feel like I have to give up running forever. I think he lacks ED experience, however, I would have loved to see C's face when he was telling me about how great it would be for me to run again once the tendons are calmed down....lol.

He told me to take Aleve as an anti-inflammatory and to do some specific stretching and strengthening exercises. Wait, the cure is to work out? That I can do....

Ok I jest, the movements aren't anything intense and won't tax my daily energy balance, I assure you.

Anyway, that's the news on that front.

Transitions Ahead

Well hello lovelies. I've been conferencing and traveling (fell in LOVE with a new state I didn't expect to like so much), but now I'm home and working on catching up with reading/commenting on blogs. I'm in the home stretch here: 2 weeks before I leave for my first official season of field work in Tropical Country, during which time I need to pack up and move out of my apartment.

Good new: leg joint pain improved greatly while I was gone! I actually did a good bit of walking and stair climbing while I was at the meeting, too. I think the recumbent bike is the main culprit for my knee woes. Yesterday was my first day back at that, and already the pain is creeping back in. Glad I was able to at least isolate the source. Biking is great for being low impact, but if done obsessively I guess the constant rotation can wear your parts out. I see the sports med doctor on Monday for an official assessment.

Eating was ok at the meeting, not perfect but not as bad as it could have been. I am always fascinated by my complete and total loss of appetite at high elevations. I've noticed it every time I've been in a place above about 6000 feet for more than 24 hours. That phenomenon (which is actually mentioned in some military training manuals, I swear it's legit) played a role in my big relapse the summer after my sophomore year of college. Anyway, I'm aware of it and am used to making myself eat when I don't necessarily want to, but it's still really interesting to see some food (donuts, cookies, sandwiches, fruit, take your pick) and instead of debating whether I "can" have it based on numbers, feeling like I wouldn't really want it even if it were calorie-free. Weird. And VERY tempting to take advantage of, although I tried not to.

To be honest I've been having some slippage, though. For the two days since I left the conference I've slashed calories for no tangible reason despite picking back up with normal exercise, and it's starting to make me feel run down. Well, unless you count feeling huge as being a tangible reason. Being disgusted with the mirror. Feels pretty damn tangible to me albeit not directly quantifiable. Yet there is the dissonance of this with the scale, which has gone down over the last week, yet I still can't stand to look at myself because I hate what I see. Blah.

And I know this next item probably will raise red flags for some people but I do think it's a decent decision: I think I'm terminating my current treatment this coming week. It's just not working. Way back in the fall I thought about quitting C but decided to stick with it, but I think I should have paid attention to my intuition that we weren't a good match.

Quitting now isn't even all that drastic, since I'm soon leaving for a month and am moving to a different city when I get back. This is a long story, but basically I'm taking this next year off of classes to do fieldwork, and will be staying with my parents the 2/3 of the time I'm not in the tropics (moving back in with the fam is a topic for its own post, but not that it is NOT for medical reasons, purely for financial convenience). It's a 4 hour drive from my university, so I'd planned to come down here and stay a night or two each week for meetings, etc, and was going to continue sessions with C and D on those visits. But now I really just don't feel like I'm getting support, validation, or good advice that I need. It's just not worth the time or the money for me. D is good, but we're at the point where I feel like it's just the same rehash every week. C is all over the place and has no consistent angle of approach or continuity of theme, and tends to make big assumptions about me that are often inaccurate. My request for a joint session with C and D was blown off. C tells me to e-mail her if I need a boost between sessions, and acts all concerned and assiduous in helping me, but invariably fails to respond on the rare occasions that I do that. I know that I sound like I'm just whining and that therapy is also much about my attitude in addition to the treatment team, but I am totally sincere when I say that I wanted this to work. Believe me, I've been that uncooperative brat with my arms crossed and my knees bouncing, staring at the clock and giving monosyllabic answers. Been there, done that, gotten myself fired by a couple of therapists, until midway through college when I realized that this shit needs to be beaten, and it won't happen passively. I did go into this wanting it to work.

Notice that I said terminating *current* treatment. I have no illusions that this problem is under control and know that I do need to keep working on it. I'll probably explore options in my new area after I move in August.

I miss H. A lot.

A few more life transitions coming up, but I think this post is long enough.

Dispatch from the Other Side of the Country

Hey, this update will be brief because I've been up since 3 AM. Changing time zones sucks!

Trip got off to a bit of a rocky start because they left my bags behind at a layover and I didn't get them until about 24 hours after I got here. Luckily I had a friend with a rental car that could take me to Wal-Mart for essentials. My suitcase also had all my backup food, but that turned out to not be a big issue because the food court here (part of the conference is a free ticket to eat there for bfast and lunch) actually has decent options.

So yesterday I got in about 1/2 my daily workout before I left home, and then spent a ton of time walking around airports. And still cut some calories, but did decently overall. Today I had FULL calories despite the fact that my only exercise was walking around campus (and not superfluous walking. It was 40 damn degrees here today, with freezing rain, and my umbrella and warm clothes were in my suitcase). I told myself it was to make up for cutting despite a lot of energy output yesterday, but I am FREAKING OUT and feeling disgusting. And, to be completely honest, all that was on my mind this evening was ways to cut tomorrow to make up for it.

BUT this is an awesome meeting and tomorrow is the most important part for me, the day when the sessions most relevant to my research are being held AND when I'll be giving my own presentation. Feeling like I don't have the option to punish myself just pisses me off more, does that make any sense at all?

Ok don't know how positive this post is. Been doing awesome so far with eating but feeling bad about it. Knees are already responding to lessened workouts, I think, which is awesome! Still pain but seems to be reducing.

I'm in a jet-lagged/caffeinated state that means I'm too jittery to relax but not focused enough to accomplish much. Blah.

But to end on a positive note, I love my job and I love being in this field of study and meeting these people and getting new ideas. This trip is stressful but it IS worth it. Today I had breakfast with one of the researchers that wrote the book I had in my backpack on the plane. On nerd cloud 9, my friends!!!

Bullet Points of the Day

Well hello my loves. I am totally beat tonight, so this will got in brief note form:

-It is after 9 PM and I have not exercised at ALL today. I drove up yesterday to drop G at my parent's house, then had to leave at 5 AM to make some business meetings that took all day, and had a 5 hour drive home.

-I violated all of my usual instincts/inclinations and saw my doctor yesterday. Mostly to get a referral for a sports medicine clinic. She did an exam, though, and said it doesn't feel like arthritis, which is a huge relief. I was concerned about that, because I know I already have a touch of osteoarth in my back (although I have no pain from it, yet). She suspects tendons. Dunno what the issue is but want it to STOP. She didn't do anything to my ankles, although they've been really bothering me too. Can they catch tendonitis from my knees? Is it just going to leak all over my body or will gravity keep it confined to my lower limbs? Getting old is so undignified.

-I see the sports orthopedist a week from Monday.

-In the meantime, tomorrow morning I'm leaving for a trip to somewhere 2 time zones away for a professional meeting. I won't be back til next Thursday. It involves a travel day, 4 meeting days, a sight seeing day, and another travel day. So my mobility (except on travel days) will be way restricted compared to my normal, hoping this will force me to heal some. If my brain doesn't spontaneously combust* first. I'll have roommates, but they're randomly assigned. I'll be in a dorm, not a hotel, so no workout room, and it will be cold so little chance to be outside (I'm have a delicate Southern Belle thermoregulatory system).

-I miss my dog.

-Cancelled therapy yesterday. I am just underwhelmed by it right now. Also, my therapist makes a big deal about being supportive outside of sessions (she gave me her number and e-mail to send messages if I need), but rarely actually answers. This happened earlier this week. Confession: secretly, I'm glad when she doesn't answer because it reaffirms my ambivalence.

-I spent most of the day as the only woman in a room full of skeptical/good ole boysey type men trying to defend a project I'm developing as not only well designed but intellectually meritorious, relevant to larger issues, and worth their time and money. They crossed their arms and spread their legs and played with their pens and alternated between staring me down and staring into space. Why is it so intimidating to be in front of a group that resembles a pack of fidgety fourth graders? Holy sweat bullets, I am drained. But it was all worth it when, at the end, one of them said "Well obviously you've got this nailed down, we're in."

-I must pack!!! And get some token yet admittedly insignificant workout time in so I don't go nuts. And sleep at some point.

-Not sure what my internet situation will be like while I'm there, battery on laptop has kicked the bucket. But I'll be able to keep up with comments via my phone. I love y'all and hope you have a great weekend!

*(Why is blogger's spellchecker telling me "combust" is not a word??? I am right! Right?).

Get the Hit

[Random text conversation from yesterday that y'all would have no interest in, ending with this]:

Cammy: Taking G. out to walk, talk to you later.

Match: I'm gonna come tackle you to keep you still and save your knees.

Cammy: I'm tough, remember?

Match: In anyone else I'd see that as a virtue, in you I see it as a future compound fracture.

The joint pain woes are not abating. I told myself I wasn't going to work out after M left for work this morning, but I didn't follow through, even when I offered myself the option of cutting calories to compensate (bad, I know, I do not endorse that strategy!). I'm going to call my doc in the morning to ask for an X-ray order or something to help determine what the issues is. I actually tossed around the idea of going to the urgent care clinic today instead, since I may not be able to get an appointment with my doctor before I leave for my trip next week (not the big international one, this one is a weeklong venture for a professional conference). I'll see what they say tomorrow though.

Yesterday CG left a comment addressing the fact that I've made progress with food but not exercise. It's a good and interesting point, because I've had several "recovery"/relapse cycles, and in each successive iteration the issues were less severe with food and more severe with exercise. I actually exercised very little at my rock bottom (in middle school), but I ate extremely meagerly as well. Trying achieve the energy output I maintain today on that dietary regimen would have killed me, no doubt. As it has gone along, every time I've increased my routine food intake, the exercise has gone up to help relieve the anxiety of it and make it feel as though I'm balancing. At one point in college I was almost as thin as I had been at rock bottom, but I was eating more calories for one meal than I had eaten in an entire day at other points in my disease history.

I don't think that the issue is that I've become a big foodie (my food intake is about "normal" for someone my age and height, albeit not one on an extreme exercise program), because I'm often frustrated and uncomfortable with the amounts that are included in my meal plan. I am self-conscious about eating that much in front of others, and often have something light in front of them and wait til I'm alone to have more. So it's not that I necessarily work out so that I can eat more food, it's that I eat X calories so that I can get through my workouts. As evidenced by my dilemma this morning, when I passed up the option of cutting calories later (and the decreased amount of food still would have made me full) in favor of a very painful workout. Put the fuel in, push for exertion, get the hit of endorphins, feel anxiety melt away, and done. Wash, rinse, repeat.

In that vein, I had a slightly challenging dinner out with M last night and it went fine. The meal I'd had to psych myself up for turned out to not be as large/substantial as I expected, and I actually had a granola bar in the car on the way home to fill it out.

By the way DO NOT SEE 'SPLICE'. Terrible, horrible, waste of 2 hours worth of brain function. Just fyi.

New Knees, Please?

I'm going to whine for a bit, requesting your tolerance in advance.

Holy patellar luxation, my knees are awful this week. They literally feel like they're coming unhinged, especially the tendons on the lateral sides. Prescription doses of naproxen aren't touching it, even just laying in bed at night is painful. Sometimes the right one is worse (most often), sometimes it's the left, and today my left ankle is flaring up too. I am 23 f*ing years old, my joints have to last me for more than a few more decades. I am SO frustrated.

The obvious questions:

"Cammy, have you had them looked at by a doctor?"

No, because I know they'll probably just tell me to take time off exercise, and I hate paying people to state the obvious to me. Too many "you're too thin so have a cheezburger" lectures over the years have jaded me.

"Since, with your vast omnipotence, you know the professionals will tell you to lay off the workouts, have you done that? Have you decreased your activity by even one minute any day this week?"

Negatory.

"Do you think this is a logical/intelligent/commendable course of action?"

Of course not.

"Have you thought about the fact that if you tear/break something this month, it will ruin your trip next month and be catastrophic for your thesis research?"

Yes, that has been in the back of my mind nonstop.

Baaaaaaaaaaah vent.

I would imagine this is a similar situation to a smoker that is coughing and hacking and struggling on staircases, dreading the big C word every day, but still doesn't feel like she has a choice but to light up and puff. I've seen people smoking through trach tubes in their wheelchairs. Old habits die hard, and sometimes they take you with them.

Not, of course, that I'm going to die from having shot knees. But my lifestyle (yes, professional and not just obsessional) is dependent on being active and mobile, and I am so frustrated that I am screwing up my future a little bit more each day in this present, but still just can't get it under control.

Blocked

Hey y'all, thanks a ton for the supportive comments/e-mails over the past week. I'm still here and kicking, just feeling a bit blocked at the moment. I've had a terrible body image week but am going along with the meal plan more out of habit than any specific goal-directed motivation. Progress on exercise continues to elude me but it's not escalating at least. I had some challenging food situations that I handled ok over the weekend but could have done better. As far as ED issues go, I feel a bit stuck in neutral at the moment.

I think the reason I'm feeling blah and ambivalent in general right now is actually not that ED-related. I am SO frustrated about some academic issues right now that it's eating at me night and day. My graduate program is not going as I'd planned/hoped. In a nutshell, a settled for a school not as good as my undergrad institution so that I could work with a particular professor, and although he's a great adviser I still find myself feeling pretty unsatisfied and out of place. I know I'll come out with a good thesis and some solid publications, but for now I feel trapped and bored in this place. I start fieldwork next month, which should help, I LOVE my study site and was so incredibly happy there when I made my preliminary scouting trip last year.

Things with M are going really well, which is almost unfortunate because he's moving 9 hours away next month.

I guess that's about it. I'll have something more themed/substantial soon, just know that I appreciate all of y'all and a day doesn't go by that I don't think about you and wish you the best!

(Side note: I didn't realize that my last post was the 400th! When I first started this blog I'm not sure where I *thought* I would be 400 posts later, interesting to contemplate).