Swimming and ITBS

Hi. This is a great discussion board. I'm so glad to have found it. Anyway, I'm a novice swimmer. I just started in summer when I began to get knee pain from running. I took some lessons in the fall. I was told my breaststroke is quite nice, and I can swim it endlessly. But freestyle is still very difficult for me. I've read most of the threads, and there's a lot of very good advice for beginners that have precisely the same issues as I do. However, my flutter kick is still quite weak and I'm having trouble managing many of the popular freestyle drills because of this. The usual advice I've seen is to do these drills while wearing fins. But I simply can't do this because even five minutes very gentle kicking in fins causes a flare up of ITBS in my right knee. I haven't seen any mention this particular problem as it relates to swimming. Does anyone else have any experience with it? Or any off the cuff suggestions/advice? I have seen a sports med spec, and his suggestion after seeing me twice was the classic "Well, don't swim then. Try cycling instead." Grrr. I live in Canada, so I don't really have the option of finding a physician with a bit more sympathy who might understand that cycling is cycling and swimming is a very powerful addiction. :( Thanks. :)