my knee sounds like popcorn

Last week I went to physical therapy and was told I could start doing light exercises again. Yay! I'd had my new brace for a week, and although my knee was still a little irritated, my athletic trainer told me to try doing some exercises to see how it goes. Unfortunately my tendinitis (or IT band syndrome or whatever you want to call it) flared up really bad a couple days later. I took a few days off from exercising to let it calm down a little. I've had to be on my feet a lot lately, so that doesn't help matters either. Now that the ice outside has melted, I've been venturing out without my knee brace on (at the suggestion of my trainer) to see if that changes anything. I think my knee has been less swollen than it usually would be with the brace on. Walking around without my brace is kind of scary, though. My leg is really weak and my knee makes all sorts of clicking sounds.

Tonight I did an assessment of things I can/cannot do yet.

Things I still can't do:

• sit cross-legged
• crouch
• get up off the floor without someone to help me or something nearby to push on

Things I can do now:

• bend my knee as much as my other one!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is a huge step for me, though I can't do it without a lot of pain/difficulty. I'm not sure if it's exactly the same amount of bend as the other knee, especially since I have to kind of cheat by hiking up my hip, but it's pretty damn close anyway.

That's all. I wish I were going to Ireland tomorrow. But I'm going to Seattle on Saturday, so that's pretty cool.