The Long and Winding Road.. to Nowhere

Think of the title as an unlikely merger between the Beatles and Talking Heads.  This is how I'm feeling right about now in that it's been a long road, but my knee is neither much better nor much worse.  The good news is that it is slightly better and we have isolated the problem to my tib/fib joint and a troublesome fibular head.  The bad news is that there isn't much that can be done about it.  In the words of my orthopedic doctor, "why don't you just break something so I can fix it."  This is my new plan:  to keep using it until I break something fixable.  My husband the PT, my orthopedic doctor and myself are all rather frustrated by the unusual nature of my pain - it has isolated but there aren't any procedures for repairing what seems to be wrong.  When my husband tapes the knee - doing a fibular head glide and anchoring it forward - it feels perfectly normal.  However after weeks of taping with what he calls "medical duct tape" my skin was raw so we had to give that a rest.  I've been doing 30 minutes on the elliptical with no problems.  Stretching very well before and after seems to help also.
  Dr. Hanks, my fearless orthopedic doc, decided to try a Synvisc injection to lubricate the joint, hoping to make everything within the joint move around better.  He also recommended a type of knee brace which is supposed to replicate taping, however I am skeptical that it will have the same effect because it won't bring the fibular head forward.  He feels by stabilizing the joint in general it may help, so I'll give it a try.  My knee feels weird after the injection, but I'll get back on the elliptical next week and see if it feels any different.

In 20 minutes I can do 2 miles on the elliptical, and I've been toying with the idea that I could do all my "run" training on the elliptical and just do 'actual running' in a short tri next year with my knee taped.  I realize that this idea is closer to fantasy than reality, however not out of the question.  Meanwhile, I've been extremely busy so time (not spent on training) hasn't exactly been "free time".  Derrick totaled his car in a freak accident, so there were 2 weeks helping him research purchasing a car, new car vs used car, car loans, car insurance etc.  He was very lucky not to be injured.  However when jumping out of his car in the woods, he managed to land in a patch of poison which consumed his legs two days later and plagued him for a couple weeks.  In my opinion the poison was God's way of saying "be more careful in the future".  Bella the Morkie was limping again and so her orthopedic doctor removed the metal pin from her previous knee repair.  Bella seems to be fine, I can empathize with her so I'm glad she's no  longer limping.  Meanwhile at work in the PT office, medical management by insurance companies has been the bane of my existence.  However, I'm having fun submitting complaints to the Attorney General on behalf of our patients who have been "medically managed" out of their benefits.  We finally got away for a long weekend at the end of September for a short vacation at Dewey Beach.  David got up at daybreak to take pictures, Bella and I slept in!  Later Bella and I went to the bar where we ordered a couple of Dogfish Head Ales.