The other day, I very nearly went to the doctor. This is highly unusual for me; I've only been to a doctor's office three times in the last ten years. Once was when I was required to go for a checkup before I left for Kuwait, and since it was mandatory, it doesn't really count. The previous time was about 3 years ago, when I thought I had strep throat, which I hear is deadly if it's not treated. Discretion seemed the better part of valor in that case. And that time before that was back in college, when I screwed up practicing diving rolls and tore a joint in my shoulder.

I don't care for doctors' offices. I don't like having to schedule my day around an appointment, I don't like sitting around waiting, I don't like filling out forms, and I don't like being prodded at. I understand that I ought to get regular checkups, and eventually I'll grudgingly start doing that -- but for now the emphasis is on "grudging," and not on "doing."

It would be different if anything useful ever came out of the doctor visits, but it seems that the advice is always, "Wait and let it get better." That was the answer to my shoulder injury; apparently, there's nothing that can be done for it except to let it heal on its own. That was the answer to mono, which is what it turns out I actually had instead of strep throat: let it run its course. It's the irritating cherry on an annoyance sundae to be told, "My expert medical opinion is that this will fix itself!"

That said, I hurt my knee at Frisbee the other day, and this seemed like the sort of problem that could easily be compounded by continued use. I dithered for a couple of weeks while I rested my knee, by which I mean I didn't go out to play Frisbee; I kept rock-climbing and walking around as normal, which didn't seem to affect it much. When I did go back to Frisbee, however, I wasn't able to run for more than a game before it started to hurt again, and I stopped for fear of doing serious damage to myself. I use my knees a lot; I'm sort of afraid of losing them.

I'd finally decided that I needed to go see a doctor; although I was sure that he'd simply tell me to give it a rest for a bit and let it heal, I didn't want to take the chance that there really was something wrong that I was making worse. However, I began to reconsider after I went on a ten-mile hike which had no discernible effect on my knee. Clearly, it wasn't activity that was hurting it -- just running.

I abruptly remembered an article I'd read on barefoot running, which claimed that running shoes actually encouraged foot and leg injuries by allowing people to run with unnatural strides. It emphasized the importance of keeping the feet under the hips, and I thought about the long strides I took when sprinting versus the short strides I took when walking.

The next day at Frisbee, I tried running with short strides. It cost me some speed, but I was able to play for more than two hours without feeling it in my knee at all. I've been working on quickening the speed of my run to make up for the shortened strides, and it's been a fairly rapid adjustment. I used to think that the guys who played barefoot were crazy, running around with no cushion at all; I thought they'd give themselves bone and joint problems that way. Now, it's starting to look like I might have had that backwards. I'm not too proud to admit I was wrong, although no one like the agony of defeet.

Mood of the Moment: good
Auditory Hallucination: Repo -- Testify