So I'm amazed.

Somehow, I must have wrenched or strained my right knee sometime around a week ago or so. I don't remember doing it. I only know that one morning when I woke up it felt thick, and sore. It didn't look swollen. But it hurt to bend it, and it was noticeably wobbly and gripe-y when I walked, and going up and down stairs was not fun. I figured it'd go away. (That's my default attitude towards anything physical. It comes from having been blessed all my life with robust good health. Now that I'm getting older, that assumption may not serve me so well all the time...)

But it didn't get better. It didn't get any worse, but I didn't want to adjust to this as a new baseline condition. So I went online. Some MD site had a bunch of articles about knees and what can go wrong with them. None of it sounded much like my experience, so I settled on one article's advice about a strained knee. I took a 12-hour NSAID, and I iced the knee for half an hour (supposed to repeat every 3 to 4 hours). I'm also supposed to "go easy on it" for a few days. As if I run marathons all the time otherwise, ha ha. I didn't expect any results.

Boy, was I surprised. After just one half-hour icing session, that knee was like, 90% better! Wowzer! And it seemed to have carried over, mostly, through to morning. Walking downstairs brought back a twinge and a wobble, so I've got ice on it again. But taking a break from that to go up to the bathroom? 90% better again!

So I'm going to "go easy on it" today (still trying to figure out how that will differ from my usual laziness) and ice it every 3 - 4 hours, and I've already taken the NSAID. I am very hopeful that a couple of days of this will heal it entirely, and I won't have to go on to Plan B, going to the doctor. I *really* don't want to go to the doctor.

But I was amazed how well this advice helped - and then I was amazed at my amazement. Why wouldn't it work? Or, why would it be less likely TO work, than not to? My brain is not as logical as I would like to think.