“Maybe you just can’t run that far”

That’s what the orthopedic surgeon told me yesterday just moments before he doubled over in pain from a kick to the groin. OK, so I didn’t kick him in the groin, but I wanted to.

Since I went straight from work to visit the doctor’s office I was still wearing a suit and apparently you can’t take x-rays through suit pants. Really? The machine can see through flesh and muscle but it can’t see through finely crafted, Italian, merino wool faux polyester from Indonesia? I was handed a pair of one-size-fits-all shorts to wear for the x-ray part of my visit and fortunately for you, Candis was with me to snap a picture of me looking sexy as hell in oversized shorts, dress socks and a shirt and tie.

Tucking the tie into the shorts really completes the ensemble. As I walked across the office to the x-ray room I could tell from the looks I was getting that all of the nurses wanted to get in my pants, and the good news is that I had room in there for every single one of them.

Shortly thereafter, the doctor came in and inspected the x-rays. The only conclusion that could be drawn from the x-rays was that beauty is NOT skin deep as the x-rays proved that my knees are sexy all the way through to the bone. Other than that, everything looked normal. Perfectly healthy knees. X-rays = useless. Hopefully that means that I won’t be charged for them, right? Right?

Next the doctor had me lie down on the table and he flexed my knee every which way possible. He poked and prodded, he twisted, he hyper-extended, he did every trick in the book to try to cause pain or discomfort but nothing came close to the discomfort I had felt earlier when he paraded me across the office in sexy shorts like a piece of meat. It was not even remotely unpleasant and I think I may have even nodded off for part of the exam.

Finally, we got to talking about the injury. I explained where the pain was (behind my knee) and told him how it only comes on after an hour or two of running. I explained how excruciatingly painful it is when it appears and how it disappears completely after ice, Advil and a few hours rest. The final diagnosis was that I probably have a tiny Baker Cyst (also known as a Gargamel Cyst) in the back of my knee that gets irritated after running for any length of time. Incidentally, no one guessed Gargamel in the comments so you all suck at diagnosing running injuries as much as I do. That’s when the doctor told me, in between coughing fits, that I could continue running and that maybe the pain was my body’s way of telling me that I just can’t run that far. He even jokingly told me that maybe I should stick to half marathons, but it wasn’t funny. He suggested I keep running, building my long runs slowly to the point where the pain starts. He also recommended taking 600mg of ibuprofen before my long runs.

The good news in all of this is that the marathon is still in the picture depending on how far I can run prior to the pain starting up. I’m going to take a couple more days off and jump back into running again this weekend, after all I’m running the Colder Bolder 5K on Sunday with Candis and Carl and it will be my final attempt at Shaving my 5K.

The most disappointing thing about the whole trip to the doctor’s office was that I didn’t even get to pee in a cup. That’s always the best part about going to the doctor’s office. I know it probably wouldn’t have helped with a diagnosis, but shouldn’t we at least give it a try on the off chance that it would? Maybe my knee hurts because I’m pissing out pieces of my knee’s meniscus and it would have showed up in my urine sample along with traces of excellence. Hey, you never know.

Edit: I Googled Baker Cyst and it turns out the other term I was looking for is Ganglion not Gargamel, however I will continue to refer to the little bugger as Gargamel because it seems more appropriate.