From jackoverfull@gmail.com Wed Jan 16 15:44:46 2013
Subject:Help! Bass pedals -> left leg hurting

Hello everyone, looking for advice, I wonder if anyone here had a similar experience…

I took on pedals a few months ago (August), bought a full sized console-like pedalboard and learned them very quickly mostly on my own, really enjoying the process and how playing bass changed my way to look at songs I've been playing on keys. Never experienced any kind of problems with my legs, caused by the pedalboard of in the past.

I've never been too much interested in doing the tapping tecnique, tough, so I've never done it so far…A couple of weeks ago, while taking lesson from my teacher, we did a full hour on that (have to point out, since the positions involved are likely to be different, that while at lesson we use a single octave pedalboard). He warned me that I might end up with a soaring leg the first time I practiced that tecnique so I didn't worry too much when, at the end of the lesson, I found out my leg was in pain, even if that was _a lot_ of pain.

I started to worry the next day, when I woke up with the leg still hurting a lot, to the point of having problems walking normally and finding impossible to do stairs putting my weight on my left leg. Now's been ten days and the situation is hardly any better, I had a medic friend take a quick look who told me not to use the leg (how I'm supposed "not to use _a leg_"?!) and prescribed me a mild antiinflammatory, wich I've been taking for the last couple of days.
The antiinflammatory dumbs down the pain for a couple of hours (on the other hand it's already being having nefarious effects on my digestive system :(), apart from that I'm in costant pain when standing, still have problems walking, bending the leg and especially going up and downs staircases. The pain is concentrated in the kneecap area and is more intense when bending the leg to a 45° angle - that is, more or less the kind of bend we do when going up or down stairs. Interestingly enough it doesn't hurt much if I bend it to a 90°, even while putting my whole weight on it, s I can at least go upstairs two steps at time. That doctor friend of mine says it's normal, since that way the weight doesn't fall on the kneecap.

I intend to have the leg examined by a good physiotherapist next week, until then: any suggestion? Any of you have experienced similar problems?

Thanks…