Monday, February 14, 2011

Exercise is Bad for You

I hurt my knee. It was swelling and beginning to hurt to walk. When I tried to straighten it, there was a disturbing noise. Grrrrinnnd and then pop. Although this was kind of on the painful side, I of course had to try it again. After all, maybe the "pop" was the sound of it fixing itself. Grrrrinnnnd, pop. Nope, not fixed.

At this point you must understand that I will do anything to avoid going to the doctor. Not only is it way to expensive but, medicine is not an exact science. Most of the time doctors are only guessing and always in a hurry to get to their next patient so they can keep on schedule. Yes, I will give doctors their due. Their guess is a least an educated one. So anyway, I decide to wait for 24 hours to see if it would get better.

No such luck.

Next morning my knee was more swollen but, everything else was about the same. So my awesome husband took me to the doc.

So the doc pokes here and there asking, "Does it hurt here? How about here?" I had to tell her about the grinding and popping. So she checks it out and then says that I need to go to physical therapy. Then she was gone. I guess she didn't think I would want to know what exactly was the problem.

Of course, I must have answers. And after doing a bunch of research of the internet this is what I came up with:

Symptoms:

  • A history of trauma or twisting of the knee. check
  • Pain on the inner surface of the knee joint. check
  • Swelling of the knee within 48 hours of the injury. check
  • Inability to bend knee fully - this maybe associated with pain or clicking noise. check
  • A positive sign (pain and/or clicking noise) during a McMurray's test. I looked up a youtube video to see how this was done. Doctor didn't do it. It just makes a squishing sound during every revolution.
  • Pain when rotating or pressing down on the knee in prone position, Apley's test. Doctor didn't do this one either. I can't do this one by myself but, after watching the video I am sure it would make me cry. (I did try my best at this one and rotating it was painful without having someone press down on it.)
  • Locking or giving way of the knee. check
  • Inability to weight bear on the affected side. It was difficult and painful for awhile but that gradually went away.

So my conclusion is that it is a Medial Cartilage Meniscus Injury. It is a guess but, it is all I have.