It started when I was playing with the dog. She was running toward the loveseat; I was standing by the loveseat. I pivoted to avoid a collision with the dog and instead collided with the wooden frame of the loveseat. I bruised the outside of my knee but the whole joint was stiff and cranky for the next week.
"Well," I said to myself after a week, "I'm not going to loll around any longer waiting for it to get un-stiff. Exercise is anti-inflammatory!" I asked Elwood to pick up a drugstore brace while he was out, and I decided I would work out gently.
I was so careful about deadlifting with a cranky knee and I thought I had nailed it -- it felt medium-hard, in a purely satisfying way, and not painful at all. But I wonder if my tender knee altered my stance or my form in a way I couldn't identify in the moment. The evening after that lifting session my lower back was angry in a way I've never experienced after deadlifting. I couldn't get comfortable in bed that night, and it's still a little twinge-y.
The knee brace Elwood brought me felt exactly right in terms of knee support, and the knee is almost back to normal now. But my skin is launching a rebellion against the brace, in the form of big angry itchy blisters covering a palm-sized area on my thigh. (I thought about posting a picture, but you don't need that image in your feed reader.)
I took off the brace, since the knee is almost all better, and I went for a brisk walk while Stella was at piano. (It is in the 30s here, with wintry mix falling from the sky. Ah, November in the Midwest.) You should skip to the next paragraph if you are squeamish, because all that brisk walking meant that the fabric of my pants rubbed against the big angry itchy blisters and caused a few of them to burst, oozing their exudate all over my nice pants.
So. The blisters are lightly bandaged, the knee is almost better, the back is mostly normal again, and I am gingerly planning some bedtime yoga after I chuck my pants in the washing machine. WHAT'S NEXT, BODY?
(Maybe it's a bad idea to ask that question.)
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