The verdict from the physiotherapist who saw me last night: my problem with my knee stems from how my body is put together:

• my left femur is twisted
• my left leg is 1.5cm longer than my right
• the angles of my legs are vastly different
• I have too little range of motion in my right hip
• I have too much range of motion in my left hip
• my kneecaps are in the wrong places
• the fat pads that belong under my kneecaps are outside of my kneecaps
• my hip/glutes/thigh muscles are tight and twisting my body
• I have uneven strength in muscle groups in my legs (strong muscles in one leg are weak on the other side)
• my right foot arch is high (this is what causes me to fall over randomly!)
• my left foot arch collapses
• I have patellofemoral pain syndrome caused my the misalignment of my femur and knee joint

…it goes on & on. Luckily she sent me over to a kinesiologist who set me up with the start of exercises & stretches to start the process of fixing this.I guess the good news is that I don’t require knee surgery at this time; there is no evidence that I have any damage to the meniscus in my left knee. Although I suppose surgery and a few weeks of recovery time seems easier than an 8 week trial to re-align my lower body.

There is a chance that I may need surgery to smooth out the rough grooves in my kneecap due to it grinding away at the cartilage and/or release the tight tendons that exercise doesn’t fix. And I will have to keep working at this to keep things in alignment once they’re fixed.

So 17 years after this all started, I finally have some answers about why I hurt they way I do.