Knees up, mother brown

Improvement in my gait, thanks to exercises involving tapping my toes while weight bearing on the other foot. I no longer list to one side. So far, so good.

Hadn't had much luck doing the next stage of hip muscle development, the modified hip abduction exercise (aka "clam shell exercise"). They were sending my muscles into spasm. Not desirable. They're supposed to make walking easier, not harder.  Beginning to feel a bit despondent about my progress, when I was sideswiped.

As an aside, I asked the neuro-physio if it's normal for knees to grind.  My patellas grind when I extend my leg. Neuro-physio had a feel, and it's common but not desirable. The kneecap is being pulled out of its proper alignment because one side or the other of the leg muscles is over-developed (or under-developed). In my case, my inner knee muscle - vastus medialis (a.k.a. 'teardrop muscle') is weak, and my outer knee is over-strong. It can happen the other way too.

My legs have been experiencing difficulties for much of the past year. It's been one damn thing after another. I actually started to cry, because when you have possible MS, problems with walking are a bit of a hot button. My neuro physio is remarkably upbeat about this. It's just part and parcel of getting me rehabilitated from a low point. It's like a car, if you don't get it serviced for a while, when you do it's going to be expensive and time consuming.

My advice: look after your body.  Once one tiny muscle/tendon starts going wrong, it's like dominos toppling. The next muscle or joint down the line is stressed, and before you know it you can't exercise until the current injury heals.

So I'll be taping for a couple of weeks, and have an exercise program that should put this right in a month to six weeks.  When I'll have a real knees up to celebrate.