nightswhosayknee wrote: The pain is kind of underneath my patella or knee cap. Does anyone have any experience with this and would like to help a desperate runner out?
Sounds like runners' knee, which I've had a couple of times. Try searching for that term and see what comes up. In my case, it took ~ 3 weeks of full rest to cure it the first time. As it started to get a little better, I found I could run a little provided I stayed up more on the balls of my feet and avoided landing hard on my heels. Downhill running was especially hard on it.