The Thing About Knees

a cautionary tale about what happens when your therapist is out of the country

I had a whole other post ready to go two days ago. It was scheduled to publish this morning and everything. It was about how I was leaving tomorrow on a 3-week trip, and how it was stressing me out because I don’t really like travel and this is the first time I’d be going back to California after my dad’s memorial service and how I’m bad at picking out clothes to wear on trips and how it all turns into a big bowl of existential angst. I was going to explain to you my plan, which was to go visit my best friend from high school in San Diego for two weeks, then go to Napa for a week to visit family. But I’ve had to abandon that plan.

The body is smart, sometimes waaaaaay smarter than the brain, and I wrote about some of that before so we’ll skip all of that marvelment today. Let’s just say this is one of those times for me.

Two weeks ago I thought it would a great idea to start running again. I’ve finally been feeling like I’ve gotten some of my old energy back. I’d been walking, but wanted to start kicking it up a notch, in preparation for my trip, because I knew I’d be doing lots of walking and hopefully some light hiking. So for three days that week, I ran one minute, walked four, for thirty minutes. Monday was great! Wednesday I was feeling it a little, but still felt like I was really on my way. By Friday I could hardly move.

My knees and ankles revolted in a most uncool way. Pain, some swelling, more pain … It was an oversized response, to put it mildly. Last week it hadn’t really gone away, but also hadn’t gotten worse. Then it got worse. Then I started to get stressed out that it was worse and started to think maybe I couldn’t go on my trip. Which made it worse still. Which made me more stressed. You can see where this is going.

In case you can’t – today I’m officially calling it, and canceling the first part of my trip. I’ll skip San Diego and see if I can feel better in time to go to Napa for Easter.

Just some of the lovely scenery I WON’T be seeing on any walks this week!

Before you ask me if I’ve you seen a doctor, I’ll just tell you no, I have not. I have a great acupuncturist and am working with him to see if I can avoid “seeing a doctor.” I don’t like most doctors (so much so that I’m keeping “seeing a doctor” in scare quotes) and I know all they’ll do is put me on something, which is not a good solution for me. (Don’t worry, it’s not arthritis or that fungus from ”The Last of Us” or anything like that. Just inflammation.)

I did some light reading (okay, one Google search) and confirmed that GUESS WHAT stress can create inflammation. It's an immune response. And stress definitely affects the immune system.

It turns out I might not be as ready to get out there and people (that’s a verb when you’re an introverted aspie, just fyi) as I thought I was. The stress of travel (airports, omg, airports!), and the emotional ramifications of going back to California after the events of the last few years is still too much, even though my brain thinks everything is fine and I can handle it. Clearly my knees disagree. Which body part will I believe? The ones that prevent me from walking farther than the mailbox.

Masking is a big issue for people on the spectrum, especially women, apparently. It takes a great deal of energy to pretend to understand what’s going on around you, to pretend that you feel like you fit in, and pretend that nothing bothers you (when in fact almost everything bothers you).

In the regular-person world out there—which isn’t very healthy for anyone, if you ask me, but you didn’t so sorry—we are taught to push through fear, just do it, put on your big girl panties, blah blah. Does this really work for you? Personally, I get much more satisfaction and enjoyment (and better immune system responses) when I do things I feel excited and joyful about, and when I have a sense of knowing that I’m on the right track. Pushing through discomfort to do things I don’t want to do feels bad. Combine that with masking, and it’s a recipe for disaster. Overload is just a few steps away. Just ask my knees!

So here I sit, feet up, rewriting today’s post and preparing to reschedule my flight and text my friend that I won’t be coming. Maybe I’ll be able to reschedule for later in the year; maybe I can get to a more authentic feeling of excitement about traveling. I hope to still make it to Napa in a couple weeks, but we’ll see how the next days go. And I’ve bought a ticket to Hawaii in August so lord help me on that one…

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Thanks for reading!