figuring it out

I spent a couple hours this morning figuring out what's going on with my knee; I saw a sports doctor and he diagnosed a problem with the tracking of my kneecap (incidentally, I should say that my left knee has been giving me problems for the last decade whenever there's a storm; in the last 6 months it's started hurting occasionally when I run and in the last month it's gotten worse, and then REALLY bad the last week).  So he sent me to a physical therapist, who worked with me for an hour and gave me a whole bunch of strengthening and stretching exercises to strengthen my inner quadriceps and to loosen the tension in my IT band.  And during the course of this, he also noted that my right hip is higher than my left, and my right arch is higher than my left, and attributed it to an ankle injury I had when I was 15 that put me in a cast & crutches for six weeks--it was crushed to the bone when I hit an underwater concrete barrier diving into a swimming pool.  It healed up after about four or five months, but I've been left with a huge lump of scar tissue on that ankle, which apparently changed the arch of my foot when it healed, and then (probably during pregnancy) gradually misaligned the right side of my pelvis.

Anyway, long story short, I now have an orthotic lift in my left shoe, which evens out my hips so they are both the same height.  And lots of exercises to do, and weekly physical therapy.  Supposedly after a couple of days of doing the exercises I can start running again a little bit, and then a little bit more, but only on the treadmill until my kneecap is stabilized again and it stops grinding and popping.  And I have to ice it after every single run--my last run was on Wednesday and it was still swollen today.  It was kind of crazy doing some of the exercises because I would start out with good form and then my kneecap would just--shift sideways--and I couldn't do anything about it.

I'm excited to get this under control and ditch this pain that has been bothering me off and on for years!