Ezzirah, I don't have any first-hand advice for you since I don't have real joint issues yet--just the aches and creaking joints that comes a bit as you get older, but I have a friend who has had back surgery as well as knee and hip issues, and he has had to change some of his gardening practices accordingly. He plants tomatoes in molasses feed tubs (round muck buckets from Wal-Mart or TSC with rope handles are about the same size) that have been placed on top of a bench and a table so he can plant, weed, water and harvest while standing almost completely upright. (The tubs on the bench are a bit lower, obviously, than the ones on the picnic table. When working with those, he can pull up a lawn chair and sit down by the bench and work from a seated position.) Another way to raise some veggies without a lot of bending and stooping is to build a salad table. You can grow a lot in a salad table, and not just salad greens, but radishes and small round carrots like Thumbelina or Paris Market, for example, or even some smaller, more compact varieties of herbs. The first salad table I ever saw was in an article that featured info from the University of Maryland, so I will link some info from the U of M so you can see what one looks like. Some people with mobility issues build a larger, deeper version of a salad table that allows them to grow almost any plants they choose at roughly their waist level. These are box gardens placed on wooden posts used as legs to raise them up high enough that the gardener doesn't have to get down on the ground or bend over a lot. I am pretty sure you can see an example of one of these on the website of Gardener's Supply.I think it would be pretty easy to build your own. I grow lettuce in a cattle feed trough that we bought at TSC last year. It is raised a couple of feet off the ground, and the part that holds the soil is about 9 or 10" deep. I raised huge lettuce crops in it last spring, followed by bush lima beans in the summer. There's not much work involved once you have it filled with soil. I planted, watered and harvested, and rarely had to even pluck out any weeds since it is raised above the ground. This winter, I've pulled out 3 or 4 weeds that have sprouted in it, probably from windborne seed. A person could work a cattle trough garden by standing and bending over, or by pulling up a lawn chair and sitting. I hope to add another trough garden this year. Originally I was going to build a salad table, but then I saw the cattle trough and thought it would serve the same purpose. Window boxes can be used to grow edible plants too. I have window boxes on the 5 chicken coop windows and even my garden shed windows. They are great for herbs, edible flowers like nasturtiums or violets, and many kinds of greens, carrots, radishes or ornamental flowers. You even can grow very small dwarf tomato plants in them. If your knee issues make it too hard to get up and down from the ground, you can use the various types of elevated containers I mentioned to continue to garden while letting your knee heal from the surgery, if the surgery is necessary. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Univ of Maryland's Salad Table

I am with d0ug on this one. I go this route for my arthritis. I have had a messed up knee (right side) for a good 20 years of my life (since my late teens). At times it was so inflamed that I had to keep it extended and had next to no range of motion. My worse flare up two years ago is what got me try the natural route. I wasn't ready to move onto the next medication and I knew my body couldn't handle it as I was already rejecting the tried and true ones. I was so amazed by what and elimination diet did for me. I wasn't diagnosed with Fibro. but am pretty sure that I had that too along with three other autoimmune conditions. I am drug free and short of getting some tightness in my joints there is no major inflammation anymore. Look up inflammatory foods and play around. One week of a hardcore elimination diet did more for me than any medication has. I would look up nightshades, gluten, dairy, soy, sugar and the joint pain connection. I wish I would have gone this route as soon as my first autoimmune condition came out. I know it sounds crazy but it has been my life saver. Oh yeah, a food journal has to be your best friend during this time - tracking everything - foods and any symptom experienced. A lot of it can be done on your own if you are willing to research online.

You are like a lot of people shopping for hardwood. I was the district mgr for Bruce Hardwood. You are getting bad advice. Your reasons for wanting a solid is based on inaccurate info. That was what I meant. The first link provided to you is an out of state hardwood company. They of course will sell you anything you order but won't stand behind it. At least the other company is Florida based. Its just important for you to understand the difference and all engineered is not the same. Suggest you search this forum for Advice from a Hardwood rep for those shopping. I wrote that several yrs ago. You need to get better information. There are valid reasons for wanting a solid but you should also understand why your local dealers are advising against it. Sorry if I sounded harsh.

It's late so I'm just going to respond train-of-thought to your questions..... RE your exercises -- that's a lot of the stuff my last PT had me doing -- I think it's general leg strengthening stuff and probably all very good stuff to do, but the exercises the new PT gave me really get the butt and outside of the hips, which is what I need, apparently, to cure the IT band stuff. And it takes so much less time -- if I hustle, I can do everything in 10 minutes. re: pilates being too boring and slow-paced -- the more advanced winsor workouts are much faster-paced with less explaining. See if you can get a hold of the Maximum Burn series - she goes very fast in that one. There's a 20 minute one and a 45 mninute one. I think they're both out of print, but there are usually plenty of used copies on amazon (cheap!) re: your arches -- I think high arches are big contributors to knee pain. I'm sure you already did this, but make sure you have the right shoes -- high arched feet need neutral/cushioned shoes -- any sort of stability or motion control shoe will just screw you up further. I have Nike Zoom Vomero 4's -- they are the cushiest shoes ever but they don't last long -- my last pair needed replacing after less than 200 miles. You may want to see a different podiatrist for a second opinion on your orthotics -- I've seen a few and each one has a different opinion on what kind orthotics to make me. I have a set of old orthotics from my 20s and sometimes I wear them to run, sometimes I don't. I don't think they make much difference actually. (Part of me thinks podiatry is a hocus-pocus kind of field!.) A good book to read is "Running Injury Free" by Joe Ellis. He is a podiatrist but very knowledgable and I found it fascinating how he took people's weird pains and traced them down to all kinds of crazy causes (one woman had hip pain that he traced to a tiny nail that had penetrated the sole of her running shoe and was very mildly poking her as she ran -- she didn't even realize it was there, but it was throwing off her stride to such an extent that it screwed up her ankle, knee and hip. But anyway, he spends a lot of time talking about how people's arches and foot structure can really cause issues all the way up the leg - it's interesting to read. re: how long I foam roll - I usually foam roll for a few minutes. You are supposed to stay on each painful spot for as long as you can and at least 20-30 seconds. I will roll til I hit all my painful spots (some twice) or until my arms get tired from holding me up (I find that you have to be pretty acrobatic to get yourself in some of these positions, LOL!) If you have painful spots, you need to roll. The first time I did it, my right IT band didn't hurt at all -- not one bit -- when I foam rolled it (and of course, my right knee didn't hurt). My left IT band, on the other hand, was excruciatingly painful the whole way up and down my leg. I rolled for maybe 3-4 minutes total (it hurt so bad I had to stop) and the next morning, I felt so much better. When I rolled again (I was doing it twice a day at first, now just once a day), there were far fewer painful spots, and now I find that if I keep up the rolling regularly, I can roll and not find any painful spots at all (and then I'm done in like 20 seconds!). Basically, if you feel any pain when you roll your IT band, you've found a problem and you just need to park there on the roller and let the roller work the knot out. Seriously -- in just days, with proper rolling, you should be feeling far less pain during the rolling itself and of course, less knee pain during all your activities. re: the fluid in your knee -- the fluid in your knee might never go away but it is probably not causing your pain. I have tons of fluid in both knees (docs think it is from the trauma of the accident) but other than making really loud crackling popping noises all the time (seriously, in my first set of PT, people could hear my knees popping from across the room when I was doing those step-ups and stuff - it was gross!), it never hurt. The pain is caused by the muscles around your knee pulling your kneecap all out of whack. Once you release the tension in your IT band and strengthen the other muscles around the knee to hold your kneecap in place, it won't be getting yanked all over the place and your pain should go away or at least become a lot more managable. Good luck!