fracture

i will be the first to admit...the word strikes terror into me. i had a stress fracture once in college once and it is not something i ever want to repeat. i called my mother (who's a nurse) last night after discovering that the bump on my knee didn't seem to be getting any smaller and asked her what i should do. she mentioned something about potentially fracturing something in passing and i think pretty much stopped listening after that. like i said, i'm not exactly a fan of that word.

knowing that my knee didn't hurt when running but still fearing the worst, i went into see one of the sports med docs at university health services. does this hurt? no. how about this? nope. and this? yeah, no. she (the doctor) said either the bursa is inflamed or its a hemotoma (basically a bruise, though this one is far enough below the surface that it doesn't/may never have the color of what you normally think of as a bruise). the solution? (i love this) ice. that's it. i asked if i should be taking anti-inflammatories and she said, nope, the ice will do more good. and she said nothing about running less (since it doesn't hurt when i run) though i did tell her what my weekly mileage looks like right now.

so i'm going to revert back to not being concerned now. if anyone is interested in talking about how cell receptors and ligands cluster, i'd be happy to oblige. welcome to my latest problem set.