In regards to my knee

Some of you (All of you?) know that I’ve been having trouble with my knee. It’s not super interesting, but in case you were wondering, here’s the scoop on that.

Back in January, I stood up from the sofa to shut the blinds on the window and my knee wouldn’t support my weight and I fell over. I don’t remember now if there was pain in my knee before that point or not, but I know for sure that there was after that point.

We went to my chiropractor in the morning to see if he could do anything about it and he adjusted it so I wasn’t in so much pain and I was mostly able to walk on it again and I put an athletic brace on it and walked with a cane when it was really painful and iced when it hurt and didn’t do much walking on it and hoped that it would stop hurting and get back to normal. Because hey! The human body is AMAZING and will heal things that are damaged. It’s amazing to think about it sometimes: Things that are alive can heal from injury!

Um, except that in my case it wasn’t working. I thought it was, but if I walked too much or tried to exercise, the pain would come back, with swelling and not being able to walk without pain. It was getting really frustrating. When I decided that I was going to cut back on my hours at work, I also decided to start doing things to improve my health, mentally and physically, so I went to yoga and I couldn’t do it! I mean, I could, but I HURT the day following, which was ridiculous. The yoga wasn’t that hard.

So I went to my usual doctor, PA Lovato, and talked with her about it and she said that I should get an MRI and see what was happening inside my knee. So then I went to get an MRI, which was interesting. They had me lay on this table thing and take a very still nap for about 20 minutes while the big camera computer machine beeped and buzzed and made a whole heap of noise, making it hard to take my nap. And then they gave me a CD of the results and sent me away. A day or two later, my doctor got a report that said that nothing was torn or broken, but that there was swelling. Which we all knew already just from looking at my knee.

So my doctor, not able to see anything wrong, said I should see an orthopedic surgeon and get that person’s opinion. So I scheduled an appointment with Dr. Hoffman, a highly recommended doctor in Savannah, and waited a few weeks for that appointment. Meanwhile, I went to see Kamaka, my massage therapist and she recommended that I see Stuart Fife, a physical therapist in town who she and the chiropractor she works with always recommend. So I went to see him and he put these little sensors on my legs above my knees and below my knees and on my feet and had me walk on a treadmill to do an evaluation of my gait. And he said that I walk with my legs at an inward angle of 10 – 15 degrees, which is a lot, and that if I strengthened the muscles in my hips and butt, then it would be greatly improved and solve my knee and my back pain and reduce the risk of tearing my ACL (I think).

So I went home with exercises that I haven’t been doing because they’re painful and frustrating, but I know I should be doing because I paid a lot of money for that evaluation and I should heed good advice when I get some.

Then I went to my appointment with Dr. Hoffman, who took an x-ray for no good reason and then looked at my MRI and said that I have a small tear in my meniscus that should be healing on it’s own except that the swelling is so much that it’s not. So he gave me a shot of a steroid in my knee, I’m assuming it’s cortisone because it’s always cortisone, and said if it’s still hurting in 4 weeks, come back and he’s got a surgical option he could do, but we’d both rather not have to do that.

And since the shot, it’s been so much better! I’m still wearing the brace as I start increasing my use of my knee. I’m going on walks and NOT BEING PAINFUL and it’s the first time it’s happened since January! I’ll get back to doing the exercises recommended by Stuart and that will, hopefully, take care of the whole problem. I’m hoping to be back to doing my aerobic videos by July, which is good because I’ve gained back more weight since November than I’d like.

So that’s that! That’s what happening with my knee.