On Friday I went to my first physical therapist session ever, at the advice of my doctor. My goal is to work on lessening knee pain I’ve been experiencing more and more over the past year.
The good news is I don’t have arthritis, according to the very nice physical therapist I met with Mitchell. Instead Mitchell strongly suspects that I have a common condition of athletes and dancers — Patellar tendinitis — or “jumper’s knee.”
According to the Mayo Clinic, patellar tendinitis is:
an injury to the tendon connecting your kneecap (patella) to your shinbone. The patellar tendon works with the muscles at the front of your thigh to extend your knee so that you can kick, run and jump. Patellar tendinitis, also known as jumper’s knee, is most common in athletes whose sports involve frequent jumping — such as basketball and volleyball.
The good news is that there are simple exercises and stretches that should help ease the pain, by strengthening my gluts and quads, to reduce the stress on the patellar tendon. It’s a little daunting know that I will need to keep up these exercises for life. But the alternative of not being able to do all the activities that I love is much much worse.
Because my dancing, skating and active traveling are so important to me and my life. I need the equipment to be able to do all those things for as long as I can.
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