I developed patellar tendonitis in my left knee sometime around 1997. GPs, specialists, therapists, my martial arts instructor, several helpful friends all looked at my knee. Mostly everyone told the same story: Exercise, stretching the quad and wearing a brace when the pain and tightness got bad.

X-rays showed the problem. Misalignment between patellar tendon and kneecap. Sorry fella. Bad luck. Looks like you've got to wear a brace the rest of your life. Oh and get ready for arthritis.

Fast-forward to 2009. 12 years of suffering with a bad knee. I'm standing in the kitchen of my apartment, wearing not much. I'm bragging to my friend what decent shape I'm in for a guy who writes code 60 hours a week.

"Not bad," she goes, "except for how flat-footed you are on your left side."

Flat-footed. Holy crap... why had nobody noticed this before? Why had I not noticed this before? I start reading about it. Relates to problems up-chain. Back, hip, knee. Knee.

I read more. "How to fix flat feet" becomes my favorite google search.

I spend the rest of 2009 working on one thing: my left pinky toe. Learning to splay my toes. Focusing on activating my pinky toe when I'm walking. Stretching and massaging my feet.

Fast-forward to today. It's 2020. I haven't worn a brace on left knee in a decade. The pain and the tightness are gone. It still doesn't have the stability of my right knee. I still have to remind myself "toes, toes, toes" when I go for a walk. But that's ok. Like this parent post says: Turns out my body wasn't broken at all.