The End of a Good, Long Run

The one about an unceremonious and unexpected break-up.

From my walk that same morning.

This past Monday, I found myself at the office of an orthopedic surgeon, waiting to get the results of an MRI I’d recently had done of one of my knees.

As I was sitting in the room awaiting the doctor, over and over I chanted in my head, “Let it not be something terrible.” Last September, I got a stress fracture in my patella (aka knee) — the chance of which while running, I recently learned, is about 1 percent — and everything had been going fine til June, when I started to feel some knee pain again during my last couple of runs. I was worried the fracture hadn’t healed properly and was back, or worse, that it was my ACL. (My old pal Dr. Google had given me a lot of great ideas about what was potentially wrong.) And then the doctor came in, and I started to realize my chant should have probably been a bit more specific.

I knew as soon as he sat down and started to open his laptop that this was not going to be a good news conversation. He showed me the MRI images of my knee, and said while nothing was broken, I had instead chipped off some cartilage from near the area where the stress fracture had previously been, which had already showed to be thinning last fall. The pain I was having was from this new pothole, as he described it, in my knee, and he calmly explained I had two options for moving forward: 1.) try physical therapy and adapt my overall activity level to match my pain threshold, or 2.) have what is a simple but serious surgery that includes a one year recovery period, give or take a couple months, as well as the usual risks of a major joint surgery (like blood clots… which is largely what led to my mom’s death, one year to the day of my appointment).

My knee is not going to get better on its own, he said, and cartilage doesn’t grow back. So, it’s either learn to live with the pain and change my lifestyle, or sign up for surgery and hope that does the trick.

Both options also almost 100% mean saying goodbye to my long-time love, running, especially door number one.

This was, without a doubt, not the news I’d been expecting, and obviously not the news I wanted. My feelings about this are heavy and layered, so much so that it’s hard to even unpack and write it out here, even though writing has always been my way to process difficult situations. (Well… writing and running, but only one’s available now, clearly.)

I’ve been a runner for about 15 years, and during that time, we’ve had a rocky relationship, which I know I wrote about in a previous post; I’ve had stress fractures and plenty of overuse injuries and been on crutches more times than I can count. I long ago realized that while everybody can be a runner if your heart’s in it, not every body appreciates running (from a wear and tear perspective). My body has proven to be the latter, even though my heart is very much committed. As a person with a health condition who was always limited as a kid in P.E. class, becoming a runner felt like an incredible gift. Like magic and freedom and proof that I was capable. That I was (am) more than what it says on a medical file; in fact, I’d made a hobby out of the thing doctors had told me I couldn’t do, and made myself proud and more resilient along the way.

I quickly became that annoying person who packs running shoes to run on vacation and who ran every year on her birthday and before big events or milestones. Running was the way I dealt with and processed my mom’s unexpected cancer diagnosis last spring as well as the pandemic, and how I tried to heal my grief after she even more unexpectedly past away last July. (In case you were wondering how I ended up in the 1% of patella stress fractures…) Running weaved its way into my identity from the second I laced up that first time in college at the gym, and helped define and guide my early adulthood. And then suddenly, it was gone.

It is gone.

And I feel lost.

To have gotten that news on anniversary of losing my mom felt like another blow from the universe. Like every July I’ll have something integral to my soul, to the foundation of my life, stolen without warning? I left the orthopedic surgeon’s office, sat in my car in the parking lot, and cried.

If I’m being honest, I spent the rest of the day — which thank God I’d had the foresight to take off from work — on the couch, switching off between watching a replay of the Olympic women’s gymnastics trials and sobbing into the cushions. I realize how melodramatic this sounds and trust me, it was melodramatic in person (I’m sure my husband can attest to that) but I felt like a part of myself had died that morning, and I was unable to talk to the one person I wanted to about it, because she too had died, the year before. It was like I was grieving my mom again along with a part of myself, together, and this time, my go-to coping mechanism was also gone.

My last run was so unceremonious for what was apparently (or very likely) the finale of the running chapter of my life. In fact, I had to check Strava to even remember how many miles I’d done or where I’d even run (5 miles, in my neighborhood, June 23). I was limping after the run and had to ice my knee, and hadn’t run since because I wanted to be responsible and wait to get checked out by my doctor (all the while assuming it was a fracture again). If I’d known that June run was IT, I’d… I don’t know — been more thoughtful about my playlist, or run somewhere more exciting, or taken photos on the run, and… well, I don’t know what else, but I just really would have liked to have had a fair warning, you know? Instead of another rug pulled out from under me.

Anyways.

I have since gotten a hold of myself, but I would be lying to not admit I’m heartbroken. And yeah, still a little lost. Maybe a lot lost.

I have an appointment with another orthopedist for a second opinion, and we’ll see what he says. I doubt the verdict will be any different, but I’m trying to stay cautiously optimistic. I know I will get through this, and that where some doors close, new ones open. But sometimes, it’s hard to not wish for a new deck of cards from the universe, at least momentarily. 🙃

My running mantra was always, “I run because I can.” If you’re a runner, go out and do the damn thing, okay? And if you’re not, well, go do whatever else is on your list or quietly whispering in your soul, and celebrate the tiny victories — do it now. Stop waiting, and believe me when I say this life is precious and short and unexpected. Carpe diem, you know?

Sending you all the YAYs,

Joelle

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