Body's breaking down again

Sometimes I feel like I am truly not meant to be an athlete. Every time I think my body is getting stronger, a nagging injury surfaces to say, "Hold on a sec there, bud. I'm not gonna just let you do whatever you want." It has been nothing short of maddening.

Immobilized with ice packs on both my
shoulder and knee after getting home from
the gym. Don't I look happy?

Last Thursday, I started feeling severe pain in my shoulder again. Not the normal achy soreness that I've had ever since I injured it last year, but a legit pain. I took the weekend off after Friday's short swim and it hasn't improved at all. To make matters worse, my knee started acting up again while I was at the gym today.

It seems like I have an injury in both parts of my body that are crucial to getting any sort of cardio workout. When my shoulder hurts, I can't run because of the knee, and visa-versa. It makes it impossible to effectively train for swim events, triathlons or even that elusive half-marathon I've been wanting to do. I've never been so upset with my job and the incredibly shitty insurance I receive as a "benefit." I'm a journalist, so I'm not exactly raking in the dough and just to get an MRI done on one part of my body is going to cost me more out of pocket than I have. And yeah, I'd need two of them.

Anyway, today's session was good, other than the knee pain. I ran 1.5 miles, cycled for 20 minutes, ran for another mile, and cycled for 15 more minutes. My knee started hurting during the second run session. After some extensive stretching in the sauna, I did an easy swim for a cool down, even though my shoulder is on fire.

I don't know what the hell to do.

Total distance: 9.6 miles cycling, 2.5 miles running, 600 yards swimming