If inflammation is indeed what he is thinking in the back of his mind, I would have liked to have that explained to me rather than a bunch of back and forth about whether I should take pain pills when the pain is minimal. Plus it was weird that he pretty much told me not to take them, then he suddenly started pushing them hard. I'm just finding myself puzzled over the whole exchange.

The one valuable suggestion he offered is that my kneecap might be tracking weird, so he is sending me to an orthopedic doc to get that checked out. I think that is probably true. It pops repeatedly and sometimes it feels like something is out of place (that's the only time it ever hurts bad, and it usually resolves within a few seconds). The knee feels perfectly fine a lot of the time, it seems like it mainly gets irritated after walking a lot - and then it hurts for 2-3 days. And it's been doing that repeatedly for months. So in my mind, this all seems a bit more nuanced than just inflammation solved by popping some pills. But at the end of the day, I have no idea.