Patellar tracking disorder

Sigh, and alas. I have been doing physical therapy now for about two weeks, for my knees, which hurt every time I get going in an exercise program. Turns out I have patellar tracking disorder, which may or may not be reparable. There are several things that I really hate about this diagnosis (no particular order):

(1) They suggest that I lose weight. This is annoying on two different levels. There's the obvious, not liking to be told to lose weight, and the secondarily annoying, which is that you are supposed to simultaneously stop whatever exercise made the knee start hurting.

(2) They suggest that I build up my quads, which annoys me, because my quads are already stronger than most people's (I can backsquat more than a lot of the women at my gym who are otherwise much bigger bad-asses than I am).

(3) They explain to me that this is often a hereditary misalignment thing, particularly since there was no trauma, and the various solutions may or may not work.

Anyway, the physical therapist is an improvement for two reasons. First of all, my GP just told me to take 2 aleve 2x a day...for the rest of my life, presumably? And, secondly, my GP described patellar chondromalacia, which is more of a symptom than a diagnosis. Oh, one more reason, which is that my GP said that the only alternative to the massive intake of NSAIDs would be surgery...which turns out not to be true...per se...

So, it's good to have a diagnosis. Some of my prescriptions include specific stretches, ice, and the graston technique (pictured above), which hurts. What's fun is that, at each session, there is a lot of sort of rough massage-style leg manipulation to determine what sorts of stretches I need to do. I think that part is the classic "physical therapy." I also get chiropractic pelvic adjustments. My very favorite part of the leg manipulations is that, since my quads are involved, I have to wear shorts and shave. Also, since I've watched the various manipulations, I've become increasingly aware of both how jiggly my inner thighs are, and how carefully I need to shave them. I considered telling the physical therapist, last time, about Emily and the German gynecologist, and the taking off of the pants. I decided that he might find it creepy. What he'd likely find more creepy is doing his job in Germany.