During my Mother's Day phone call with my mom today, we were talking about preschool-related health problems, since both of us are special education preschool teachers. Mom is currently having some serious back/neck problems as a result of the strain, yet another reason why I'm contemplating a change of careers.

We were discussing my recurring knee problems, and I mentioned in an aside that I've recently decided I must have had some knee problems going back to childhood, because I frequently had knee/leg pains from activity that I just didn't complain about, because I thought everybody felt that way when exercising. Exercise is supposed to hurt, right? Right! (Wrong, I know now.) But somewhere along the line, I had received the idea that I should either put up or shut up, so I shut up and basically dropped out of sport after sport through childhood (soccer, basketball, dance, softball - went through all of them and couldn't enjoy a one, each one made me miserable). Nothing was ever really wrong with my legs, to my knowledge, so I figured I was just weak or lazy. Everybody else could run, I just wasn't in shape. Even though I was doing all the sports that everybody else was doing.

Well. As we're discussing this, Mom informs me that when I was a toddler, well after I was walking, she woke me up one day and I simply wouldn't walk. Every time she would stand me up, I would collapse and start crawling instead. I didn't seem to be in any pain, but I just would not walk. My legs weren't working. Mom, with her background working with handicapped kids and knowing everything that can go wrong, panicked and rushed me to the ER, but they couldn't find anything wrong. Later that day I started walking again and seemed fine.

Later, probably around age 4 or 5, I was complaining of frequent leg pain, so they took me to the doctor and I was referred to a pediatric neurologist. He couldn't find anything wrong, either, and suggested it was just growing pains (I was beginning the growth spurt at this time that would land me at a final height of 5'11" by sixth grade). I wonder now if something about this neurologist result was involved in my childhood conception that everybody's legs hurt when exercising, and it was normal and everybody just shut up about it.

Put that together with the fact that I still can't run without pains in my shin (which I've assumed recently was shin splints, therefore I no longer run) and that I seem to have frequent knee pains/small injuries... well...

First off, has anyone heard of something similar? I hadn't put much thought into it until I learned about my early history. (Which is scary in and of itself; I have childhood memories that I can date back to age two and a half, so the fact that I had these early scares and didn't know about it is kind of freaky. Surely I should have remembered the neurologist. I'm racking my brain now.) Anyway, I wonder now if maybe there's not some underlying problem that's been there all along that would connect all these events.

Second, I wonder if I should be looking for a specific exercise program that avoids the legs. Mom mentioned water aerobics, but that's not feasible right now with me and my city mouse lifestyle (I can't afford a health club with a pool). Maybe when I'm older. I've noticed while doing my Pilates tapes that the upper body workout is fine, until I have to get on my knees, and then I start to have difficulty. I cannot do the lower body workout. I've skipped it altogether. My knees just can't take it.

I guess I should talk to my doctor about this, but I thought I'd start by seeing if this rang any bells with anyone.