Tag: IT band

April 2024 Update

On By LeraIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Just going to keep this short and sweet since not a lot has happened since last time.

I had another follow up for my knee injury. It’s been trying to get better, so I opted not to talk with a surgeon at that appointment. It’s still limiting me enough that I’m still considering surgery, but I figured if it seems like it’s trying to improve, it would be best to hold off for now. The lateral knee pain has gotten better in that it’s not every day anymore, but it does still bother me if I stand with too much weight through my left leg, or it I have my knee bent a while and then straighten it. I haven’t noticed major issues with the lateral pain after I workout. The posterior pain is an ongoing issue, as is the joint as a whole feeling swollen after I run, and sometimes if I bike more than an hour. I’m usually good to run for a mile to a mile and a half without having pain later, but more than that and it isn’t pretty. I’ve pushed my running to three miles a few times, and while I usually feel okay during the run itself, I have pain soon after stopping and I hurt for the whole rest of the day, sometimes into the next day.

My doctor still thinks a lot of my issue is my IT band, but I’m just not so sure. When I get the lateral pain, it’s different than when I’ve had IT band pain. The pain I get now is lower. Back near the beginning of everything, I did have that very classic IT pain, but now I just don’t know. He explained that the IT band can cause pain where it attaches lower down the leg from that “textbook” area, but I’m hesitant to cut it until I feel sure. Still no clear idea of the cause of the posterior pain. May be my torn meniscus, may not be, especially since the area of pain doesn’t overlap the tear most of the time. If I have surgery, they’d look at everything first and then the plan would be to release some tension on my IT band and fix/cut out the tear in my meniscus, along with fixing whatever else they find while looking inside. It just scares me to mess with my IT band because what if it isn’t the problem after all and then it’s too lax? I don’t want to set myself up for future injuries.

I follow up with the doctor again at the end of May, and honestly if there isn’t ongoing improvement, I’ll likely just go the surgery route. The surgeon he wants me to see is very busy, so I assume surgery would be pushed out a couple months anyway. If in the lead up to it I feel things have improved, I could just cancel. It sucks to be at this point where I don’t have conservative options left and I’m just playing a waiting game. I’m having a hard time knowing what the right decision is here for myself.

One Final Push

On By LeraIn Cycling, Life, running, SurgeryLeave a comment

Had another follow up with the ortho clinic two days ago. I’ve had very minor improvement in my knee since the last injection, but I’m still getting pain with even walking still sometimes. I can walk farther most of the time before it starts bothering me, but I still have days where it just doesn’t like me to walk on it at all. After every activity that involves weight bearing, I have pain. I get pain after walking, after running, and even after standing twenty minutes to cook or greet people at the doors at church. Biking is almost normal, but I’ll still get pain after that if I ride longer than about 45 minutes, but shorter rides are okay 85% of the time.

All that said, I feel like I’m back to where I was before I injured myself further at the 5K race in November, but even before that I was still struggling with these same issues for 3 months. Now we’re at 7 months, and it’s not looking great that they will resolve without help. The doctor told me there’s still a chance that they can improve, but told me to look at it from the perspective of how much it’s limiting me from the activities I want to do. The truth is that it’s holding me back.

At my appointment, I had fully planned to discuss my surgical options, but I was so undecided about it. The doctor was really understanding about it and told me to take the next month and see if things improve, and during this next month, he told me (directly quoting him) to “beat the shit out of it as a field test”. He told me to increase my activities and see how it responds. Just based on how the weekend went, I think it was stupid of me to push surgery off another month, but I want to be sure I need it. I really don’t see things improving in the next month, but I’ll make suer I run consistently and keep doing my rehab exercises and see what happens.

Steroid Shot Round Two

On By LeraIn Cycling, Life, running, SurgeryLeave a comment

I had my ortho follow up yesterday. I did get some relief from the steroid injection into my knee joint last time. It gave me some off my range of motion back and helped with some of the pain, but it didn’t help with everything. I remain unable to bend my knee all the way, or straighten it all the way, so trying to do some of the stretches the doctor gave me hasn’t been going well. It’s still too painful to attempt a quad or hamstring stretch, but I’ve been able to do most of the strengthening ones pretty decently.

Given continuing symptoms at my appointment today, the doctor injected my distal IT band to see what that does for me. I’m still getting lateral and posterior pain, and walking still isn’t comfortable, but biking has been feeling a little better. I’m having less pain and stiffness after a ride as long as I keep it slow. Although any amount of pain is still too much, it’s at least a step in the right direction.

If this steroid injection doesn’t fix the problem and get me starting to run, I’ll be discussing surgery when I go back in 6 weeks. Hopefully it won’t come to that, but that’s the very last option. I’m not crazy about the idea of surgery when we don’t even know for sure what’s going on, but I’m pretty sure arthroscopy can aid in diagnosis, and they can fix the problem if they find something right at the same time, so I’m trying to be as positive as I can. The doctor mentioned possibly releasing tension on the IT band, but that’s assuming that’s the cause. The area where it hurts isn’t the same as where I had IT pain before; that was a little higher up on the knee and this is lower. He still doesn’t think it’s likely to be my meniscus even though it is torn since it’s on the medial side, which is the opposite side of my knee. I also have a Baker’s cyst that could be the cause. Basically, we’re both just crossing our fingers and hoping we can at least narrow down what’s going on. Unfortunately, it could be one or all of those things.

I felt pretty good when I woke up this morning (waaaay too early at 2:45 am thanks to insomnia being a side effect of the injection), so I took myself out for a walk at 6 am and managed to hit two miles. I was really slow, but only mildly sore while I walked without a noticeable difference in pain later on, so that’s a good sign. If I can get the pain while walking to disappear over the next two weeks, I’ll try slipping in a couple tenth mile intervals into a walk. I don’t want to rush back into trying to run and make it worse again, but I also need the information for when I go back for my follow up. If I still can’t run, I’ll let them cut me open and see if they can find the problem. I’m far too young for this to be the end of my running, so I’ll give it a try if I have to.

I’ll let you guys know how things continue to go as always!