First day, my whole right leg sort of ached a little. Second day my right hip, knee, ankle, and thigh muscles were sore. Starting on the third day and continuing now 5 more days (although it’s getting better) it feels like I twisted my knee. If you’ve had anything like this before, I’d like to hear your experience.
Symptoms: the knee in general is a little swollen, although it’s hard to tell because my thighs are pretty fat to start with. The main symptom, though, is that a strip along the inside of the knee, well below the patella, is sore and if I twist it at all or hold it in any of several “wrong” positions, I get a massive twinge there.
Progress: starting with the knee pain on day three (call that day 1 of knee pain), I have put ice on it for several hours a day. This seemed to help quite a bit the first day, less on the second day. The third day felt better so I thought I would try some exercise - 25 minutes walking at 3 mph on a treadmill at 6 degrees. That was a mistake, the pain came back as bad as ever and I could hardly sleep that night. Since then, with some icing, it has gotten back to as good as it was before the treadmill, maybe a little better. This means that I have a smaller array of “wrong” positions, and it does not hurt very much at all when I am at rest.
Questions: does this sound bad enough to warrant a doctor’s visit? Should I try heat instead of ice, or alternating heat and ice, or stick with ice?
Vote for doctor. It’s not really improving. Even if all they do is send you to physical therapy, you should learn more about what is causing the issue and how to strengthen the area.
Even innocuous actions can cause trouble, and the reaction can be delayed so you might not notice much in the moment. Any odd steps off/onto a curb? Missed a step going up/down stairs? Pivoting suddenly with weight on one leg? For me, personally, I have wrenched my knee more than once by getting out of an automobile without taking care.
Well, this may likely be it. I complained about this in the mini-rants thread I think: a day or two before I noticed anything wrong with my leg, UPS delivered a 2-drawer file cabinet (fairly cheap, therefore fairly light weight, but still) balanced on my curved front step. I lifted it down and carried it into the garage by myself. I could well have pivoted on that leg in the process of doing that (I don’t really remember that much detail about the event). And I am retired, quite a bit overweight, and haven’t been exercising as much lately.
For the other folks, I don’t think this is a chronic problem with, for example, my hips, mostly because it came on so suddenly for the first time.
A friend of mine recommended a sports medicine place, so I’ll probably give them a shot at this as soon as they can see me.