Calling all knee injuries....

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’m doped up on vicodin right now, so this probably won’t make sense, but here goes…

Yesterday, I blew out my knee. I wish I had a better story, but the truth is I was squatting to put some papers in my briefcase and when I stood up, I heard it pop. At first, it just felt weak, but then it started to hurt. Luckily, some of my coworkers were around to help me (God knows the students weren’t going to help :rolleyes: ). I called my parents and they came to pick me up. Mom and I went to the ER, where they confirmed that nothing was broken and referred me to an orthopedist.

Thankfully, I got an appointment this morning with the doctor. He thinks I’ve torn the cartilage and will need surgery to repair it. I have an MRI this afternoon to confirm the diagnosis. In the meantime, I’m stuck in this chair, watching TV. Thank God for wireless internet (installed last week!). :cool:

So, tell me your stories of knee injuries and don’t spare me. I want to know what to expect. Right now, I expect a lot of pain and frustration.

Oh and the most important question of all: how long until I can wear my high heels again? :eek:

2

Right knee:

In high school we were playing baseball on an ice pond. I swung and missed and my body twisted around while my right foot somehow stayed planted. Shrrrrrik. I went down. Went home. My knee swelled up completely and I couldn’t move it or stand on it for days. MRI indicated torn lateral meniscus (but surprisingly NOT an ACL). I opted not to have surgery. The knee got stronger and while I have occasional pain, I think I made the right decision not to have surgery.

Left knee:

Playing soccer about 3 years ago. I was easily jogging after a ball that went out of bounds, and all of a sudden, it felt like my knee went sideways. I went down. Tons of pain, loss of stability, tons of swelling. MRI indicated ACL tear and medial meniscus tear.

The abridged version: I got surgery. Went through PT, had problems getting running again, but I’ve taken up cycling and I’m in pretty decent shape again.

I didn’t like having surgery (especially the part afterwards when I couldn’t pee and had to ask them to put a catheter BACK IN) or recovering. IANAD, but if you’re not an athlete, you might want to opt out of surgery and see just what good Physical Therapy can do.

Don’t go into surgery lightly even though it is now a pretty streamlined procedure. It’s not fun and I don’t think they got me back to 100% anyway.

3

I had something like that a couple of years ago. I had been squatting down picking up toys and must have twisted some strange way. When I got up the next morning it was swollen to softball size and I could hardly stand on it without feeling faint from the pain.

I went to my internist and he gave me a steroid injection which helped a lot. The X-rays didn’t show anything obviously torn, so they just put me on an anti-inflammatory and sent me to physical therapy for a couple of weeks. By about a month later it seemed completely better, although I do notice some weakness on the (very rare) occasions when I run. My knees were always a weak point, though, even when I was young. The therapist suggested some stretching and exercises to help keep the kneecap centered better, which is supposed to help prevent this sort of thing. I’m afraid I haven’t been very good about that.

No surgery, though. If I were you I would get a second opinion on whether that’s really necessary.

Can’t help you on the high-heel thing. They make my toes ache.

4

A couple of years ago I crashed pretty hard while skating in an empty swimming pool. My knee got twisted under me when I fell and the pain was so intense that I puked while laying there in the bottom of the deep end.

I’m pretty sure that I tore something. My knee swelled up and the pain was pretty intense. I, however, decided to treat it with copious amounts of ice, ibuprofen, and beer (w/o health insurance this seemed like the most affordable way to go). It slowly got better and seems okay now. I was playing basketball a couple of weeks ago, though, and I could feel it twinge every once in a while so who knows.

5

Hello fellow knee blower outer. You are in quite the exclusive club of fun and frolic.
My story.

My story, abridged:
I blew out my left knee earlier this year playing basketball. ACL, LCL, miniscus and various other bits of cartilege throughout. As the doctor said, my knee basically turned to jello, and not the good and tasty kind. I had surgery to replace my ACL with a cadaver’s and had the miniscus and cartilege fixed up. The LCL was left as is because it’s kind of like the appendix of the knee.

Tips:

  1. If you have some kind of ACL surgery, do your best to push for a replacement ligament from a cadaver as opposed to using something from within. I had to have one from a cadaver just based on the torque I put on my knees due to my height, but it really will make surgery less invasive (8 stitches and no scars versus 30 staples and a line down your leg) and recovery much, much quicker.

  2. Do your rehab. When they give you exercises, ask for the maximum amount you should do each day as opposed to a minimum. Do that amount. I can’t stress this enough.

  3. Do your prehab. That is, work the knee prior to surgery (of course based on what your doc or PT recommends). The more you can strengthen surrounding areas, the quicker you can rehab the knee after surgery.

  4. Don’t get frustrated. Rehab isn’t the greatest but make it a challenge to improve. 2 months after surgery I was doing one legged squats, jumping over benches, and riding a bike 10 miles a day because I had worked hard to reach that point. Other people that had surgery at the same time were still limping around. It felt good to beat them back.

  5. Get a good brace. Mine’s pretty robotic looking due to the continued desire to engage in high impact activities so your needs may vary here.

  6. Get your post-surgery prescription for pain killers filled right away. The most pain I felt were in the 2 days after surgery.

  7. Get an epidural for surgery as opposed to being knocked out completely (if you can handle it). You won’t be able to leave the hospital until you can get up and go to the bathroom. Good times there.

  8. Have good crutches, but be prepared to cast them aside. I was off of them in one week, but I felt really shaky and uncoordinated. Walk near walls and props for the first couple of days after losing the crutches. Mentally, it helps.

  9. Be positive. Eh, it’s a road bump, but an interesting one at least. You won’t be laid up in bed for too long and you get to learn new things about your limits and desire.

  10. Get a ___ machine. Can’t think of the name of it. If insurance covers it, this is a machine that you strap your leg into post surgery. It will automatically bend your knee over and over for hours on end while you lie in bed or on the couch. As swelling subsides, you up the range of motion. This thing is invaluable. When in it, at the 180 degree position, flex your quads. If you don’t these will shrink up quickly making walking harder.

  11. Eh, I’ll end it here but I could probably come up with a few more. As a bonus, when eating turkey this year, pay special attention to the sound made when you pull the leg off the bird. That’s pretty much the sound made when I blew mine out. Eat well!

6

Tore my medial meniscus cartilage this summer.

Put up with the pain for the rest of softball season, but couldn’t play. Finally got tired of sleepless nights and got it checked.

Doctor gave two options. “I can give you rehab, the pain will eventually subside a bit, and you might get it strong enough to function, or I can go in and fix it.”

Got arthroscopic surgery in an outpatient surgical center (not a hospital). Showed up at 10, was home by 1.

Surgery itself was uneventful. Usually there are 4 tiny incisions around your kneecap, about 1/8 inch each. My tear was larger than expected, so there was a 5th incision. The doctor will either sew or remove the damaged cartilage. Go for removal if he offers a choice. I hear the recovery time is much less. After recovery and after my wife was given discharge instructions (“He’s still legally intoxicated, so do not let him make any financial or legal decisions for the next 24 hours”), I was made to walk out (no crutches).

Yes it hurt, but only for a day and a half. I got darvocet to take the edge off.

My knee was wrapped in gauze and an ace bandage, with steri-strips and a plastic sheet of tape over the incisions. They have to stay on for a week, and showering was difficult, since they couldn’t get wet.

I’m only a month out of surgery, but my knee feels great, and I regret putting off surgery.

7

Left knee here.

I was larking around with Dear Robert on our second date, and I jumped down off a low wall. When I hit, I felt a sickening sensation in my left knee, the feeling that the joint had moved in ways it wasn’t supposed to move. The knee started hurting like an SOB and started swelling almost right away. I was trying to be a brave soldier (it was our 2nd date, and I didn’t want to look like a wuss), but I could barely walk, and I still had to get in my manual transmission car and drive home. I made it, but it wasn’t fun. I got it x-rayed that time, and there wasn’t damage on the x-rays, so I just went home and rested and iced it for a few days and walked with a cane for about two weeks. It gradually got better, though it took a good while before I could bend it completely again.

Fast-forward a couple of years. I was at a flyball training class with my dog Sasha. I was running along beside her as she went over the jumps. A friend’s dog got loose and was chasing Sasha, and happened to trip me up. As I fell, I felt that sickening feeling in my left knee again. I went and iced it, but this time it didn’t get better. It kept hurting and hurting, and would hurt all the way up to my hip. I’d sit at my desk and cry in the afternoon sometimes, it would hurt so bad. Turns out I had torn my ACL and had also torn meniscus cartilege (a “bucket handle” tear). My knee was not stable at all. I could feel abnormal joint movement when I was swimming even.

I ended up having ACL repair surgery. The surgeon also trimmed and repaired some of the cartilege. They used the middle-third of my patella tendon. (I was scheduled for a cadaver tendon, but apparently cadavers were in short supply when I needed on.) As Mullinator said, that did make my recovery more complicated. I had a 3" incision on the front of my knee that had to heal, along with the tendon repair.

All Mullinator’s points are excellent. I think the machine he was trying to think of is the CPM (Continuous Passive Motion) machine. I didn’t have one of those, but I read about a lot of people who did. It seems to have made a difference for many people. I did have a little pump that attached to a cooler and a cuff that went around your knee. You’d fill the cooler with ice and water, and the pump would circulate chilled water through the cuff around your knee. It helped a LOT with the pain and swelling.

After about 6 years now, my knee isn’t too bad. It’s sore a lot of the time, but not REAL sore, so it doesn’t really slow me down that much. It’s much more stable now than it was before surgery, and that’s a big plus. I still don’t squat WELL, but at least I CAN squat. (And I really didn’t wear high heels before I hurt my knee either, so can’t help you there.)

I haven’t been there lately, but Bob’s ACL WWWBoard was a big comfort to me after my surgery. I had trouble getting flexion back, and folks there gave me some tips that really helped.

Good luck! I find I have lots of sympathy for any athlete that injures a knee these days. I’m also very careful with my knees, because I NEVER want to go through that again.

8

Mid July, playing basketball…driving to the basket, plant my right foot to jump, and get bumped (kind of hip-checked, to borrow a hockey term). Knee exploded. I go down screaming like a little girl. Muscles immediately cease firing. Complete ACL tear, partial MCL tear, and both meniscus torn.

We waited until the MCL healed up some to do the ACL reconstruction. My advice is the opposite of the above poster, I had the patellar tendon autograph. My surgeon said the rehab would be longer and harder, but for someone who plays as many sports as I do, would perform better long term. I had surgery on Aug. 31.

I am going back in on Dec. 17th for another surgery. I still cannot get full extension, as the notch in the patella has overgrown and is blocking the joint. I didn’t have full extension pre-surgery either, as the lateral meniscus had rolled up and was blocking the joint. Some days, I walk almost normally, some days I can barely bend my knee and walk with a horrible limp.

I’m finally able to ride a stationary bike again, so I can do some cardio type work, but I did get out of shape (added 10-12 lbs) during the 3 mos I was on crutches.

I should be playing basketball and football again next summer, lord willing.

In the course of my therapy, I’ve talked to some people who had meniscal repairs…many of them are only on crutches for a couple of days. IF the meniscus can be resewn(usually only if the tear is along the edge and parallel), you will have a longer time on crutches, as you cannont put weight on the repair for several weeks (anywhere from 2-6). IF they just do a trim, and cut out the damaged part, you should be on your feet in a few days.

My problem with the scar regrowth is very rare (around 2% is what I was told). I was able to get into the best orthopedic institute in town (they handle our NFL team). I would definately talk to as many people as you can and get referrals before you select a surgeon.

9

OK, here goes.

New Year’s Eve, 1989. I’m stepping out of my apartment building, sometime in the afternoon (no booze yet, so that has nothing to do with this story). I put my foot down, and I encounter ice (inside the lobby – apparently the super had mopped the floor or something, but the low temperature caused whatever moisture was left on the floor to freeze). I go flying. I land, knee-first, on a jagged bit of metal, which goes right through my kneecap (although I didn’t know this at the time). I get up. My knee hurts like hell, and it’s bleeding. I figure I’ll go back upstairs, and I do get up to the fourth floor, somehow, leaning heavily on the handrail as I hop on one foot up the stairs.

I sit down on the couch and it becomes apparent that I’ve really done something bad. I can see that my knee is split wide open. OK, I tell myself, you’ve got to call an ambulance, because there’s no way you’re going to get to the hospital on your own.

I call the ambulance. They take me to a city hospital (which is an experience in and of itself here in New York). The doctors have a look. They tell me I’ve shattered my kneecap. The bleeding is nothing to worry about, they say. They say I’ll need surgery to repair the kneecap.

It’s New Year’s Eve. There’s not a surgeon in the place. They admit me to a room. Did I mention I had no health insurance at the time? The room has eight beds. Seven of them are occupied by people who’ve been sent there from Riker’s Island (a New York City prison). They’re handcuffed to their beds. They’re mostly screaming for methadone. The guy next to me is there because he was body-packing cocaine in from Colombia and one of the bags started to leak, so he turned himself in.

A day or two later (I can’t remember), I have the necessary surgery. They use screws and wire to reassemble my kneecap, and send me home on crutches a day or two later.

No problem. I get stronger, I ditch the crutches and use a cane, and eventually I ditch the cane. Years go by, and I walk around perfectly normally.

Then it starts to bug me. Sometimes it swells up and hurts like hell, and I can’t walk for two days. So I go see an orthopedist, supposedly a good one (he’s actually been featured in New York Magazine as one of the ten best in New York – obviously I’ve got health insurance at this point). He says that one of the screws is poking into muscle when I bend my knee all the way, causing it to bleed, hence the swelling and pain, and it has to be taken out, which is no problem, since the bone is all healed now. That will solve my problem.

So I have the surgery. It does indeed solve the bending and poking and bleeding problem. However, my knee is never the same after the surgery. I can’t walk more than ten blocks or so without excruciating paid. I just can’t get around. This goes on for a couple of years, and I get sick of it.

I see several orthopedists. They look at my x-rays, recoil in horror, and tell me they don’t want to get involved in this. I begin to gather that the surgeon who took out the hardware really fucked something up badly, and the orthopedists, because of professional courtesy or whatever, don’t want to get involved.

I finally see an orthopedist who tells me that whoever operated on me the second time took out a whole buch of cartilege and tissue that shouldn’t have been taken out. Basically, there’s nothing in there anymore. He says I need total knee replacement. I tell him to go for it, because I’m sick of this.

I have the knee replacement. I go into the hospital on Thursday morning. They do it. I’m up on my feet hobbling around the hospital the next day. They send me home on Sunday. I’m back at work the next Thursday, albeit with a cane. After a week or two, I lose the cane. Physical therapy helps, but I’m getting better just walking around and doing whatever I want. The therapy seems easy. I get better and better.

The knee replacement is wonderful. I can do anything I want. It works great. No pain. Solid joint. My knee is better than it’s been since 1989. I love my new metal knee.

I go to another orthopedist. He say

10

I tore my ACL playing indoor soccer my senior year of high school. A guy with crazy legs came up and tried to steal the ball (impressive, considering I had already passed it off a bit earlier) and stomped down. Loud popping, and suddenly I was on the ground ripping out big chunks of artificial turf. At the time, they had me doing no rehab exercises before the surgery. Apparently that was bad, because doing it before the surgery can help with post-surgery rehab.
Like others, I stress, stress, stress doing the rehab. It hurts like hell, very inconvenient and unpleasant, but it’ll be worth it to get your full range of motion back again.
If you are older and not anticipating doing any kind of really strenuous exercises or motion with your knee, you may not need to have surgery. With ligaments torn, it will be risky doing any kind of lateral movements, so tennis, soccer, basketball, etc will most likely be out. But things like running and biking would probably be okay. Of course, I am not even close to being a doctor, so I offer the “speaking out of my ass” disclaimer.
Oh, and crutches suck. So does the big leg brace. The worst part, though, was when they removed the little hemo pump thing out of my knee. The doctor said, “This will feel funny,” and suddenly ZIP! Out comes a big tube through a large hole in my knee. Another thing: see if you can watch the surgery! I woke up part way through mine and got to watch it on the monitor. Lastly, if they don’t get all the bone fragments out of your knee it can really cause you a lot of pain later. I went through my allotted morphine reeeeeeeeal fast.
Good luck with it!

11

My right knee makes a funny sound accompanied by a small amount of pain sometimes when I do things like stand up. I put more stress on it than it needed for years by being overweight, but I’m in the middle of major weight loss now (46 pounds so far). I’ll be 28 Saturday, so I don’t think I can attribute it to old age just yet. I’m worried about it. Should I be concerned? Should I have a doctor look at it now, or wait until it does something really bad? I know that seems like an obvious thing, but I don’t want to go in and have them say it’s nothing.

12

My knee (among other things) got messed up in a car accident. The immediate treatment was the usual rest, ice, and pain killers. Later I had physical therapy for a few months and it did improve up to a point. There was a sharp pain in one particular place that no matter what we did would not go away. Then I got an MRI that confirmed a torn cartilege that had its rough edges being irritated. I had same-day laparoscopic surgery, followed by more pain pills for a couple days and more rehab. It will be one of the first parts to start to ache when I’ve been on my feet a long time, but other than that, it’s fine. The surgery itself was no big deal. I had general anaesthesia; I’d had it a number of times before with no problem so it was presumed not to be much of a risk and it sure saved my nerves from having to be aware of somebody doing weird things to my leg.

13

Thanks for the stories. It is making me feel better; at least I know what to expect. I just got back from my MRI, so I should have a diagnosis and treatment plan tomorrow.

Trunk and cher3: I’m not too excited about the surgery option, but my doctor is adamant that it’s the best choice. I’m only 28 and I’d rather be assured that this will heal correctly, than risk having problems later on.

Ol’Gaffer , I don’t know how you did it man. :eek: There is no way I could stand this without serious painkillers. I think I’m finding that I’m a bigger wuss than I thought I was.

Mullinator, thanks for all of the suggestions. Except the one about the turkey leg. That gives me goosebumps just thinking about it. :eek:

LMM , that sounds horrible. But I’m glad you’re doing well now. I feel very confident in my doctor’s opinion and ability. My mother has had three knee surgeries by him and they all went great.

Thanks again for the stories and advice!

14

I don’t have a knee injury, per se, but I did recently have surgery to repair the three fractures to my leg after being hit by a truck while walking to work and my knee is just as sore and tender as every other part of my lower leg as that is where they put the rod in and I have a small incision to the left of it where one of the screws is too.

I don’t have much advice (okay, none at all) but I can definitely empathize. I was in a partial cast for a week and am now in a walking cast in addition to being wheelchair bound for the next few weeks while I undergo physical therapy. The swelling, bruising, itching, and general annoyances of it all is really starting to get to me and I am more than a little peeved at the guy that hit me right now despite him being pretty nice.

If I happen to see him sometime in the next month, I am going to be sure to run over his foot with my wheelchair.

Hope things go better for you. :slight_smile:

15

Not as dramatic as the others, but I’ve done as much cumulative damage to my kness by the age of 18 as most people do by the age of 40, so I think I should get honorary membership to the club.

Chronic tendonitis, both knees, which has apparently mutated into arthritis. Hurts to work out on though I do it anyway, and I sound like an old woman when I get out of bed some mornings - "Oooh, my aching knees…"snap-crackle-pop.

My (hypocritical) suggestion: if you can do something to make the problem go away, do it. Best of luck.

16

I’m amazed by the people I met in therapy (and on here) that could walk with torn ACLs.

My quadriceps muscles went completely static at the time of injury, and it took several weeks of NEMS therapy to get it firing somewhat normally. I could not walk at all (not even partially weight bearing) until well after the reconstruction.

17

That’s it. Total lifesaver.

9 months post-injury and no one can tell I had anything done. Glad medicine is beyond leeches and whiskey.

18

16 years old: Partially tore my ACL, got it scoped to check it out, no cartilage damage, and tear wasn’t serious enough to warrant reconstruction. Total time in hospital: 4 hours and was walking the following day.

17 years old: Fully tore my MCL, and had my knee scoped again to make sure I hadn’t aggravated the ACL (apparently it was hard to tell from the yank & pull tests) or torn cartilage.

To fix the MCL, they basically opened up a 5 inch incision along the inside of my knee, found the ligament, and screwed it onto the bone with a spiky washer and a 3.5 inch screw with a hex head. It looked remarkably like a closed corkscrew auger, actually.

Turned out the ACL was in fine shape- better than the year before, according to my doctor.

The most painful part of the whole thing was the day or two immediately following surgery, when it swelled up and hurt like absolute hell. Then it calmed down and didn’t bug me so much. It actually hurt worse than the injury initially did.

The one weird thing about the injury was that it didn’t really hurt initially. It took about 5-10 minutes, THEN it started hurting, and man did it ever hurt then.

19

  1. You might have had so much trauma that you had sever atrophy.

  2. My doctor didn’t want me walking for 6 weeks because of the meniscus, not the ACL.

Ol’ Gaffer You can kind of shred up an ACL without completely tearing it. I actually had a few shreds left, but they weren’t doing much.

The used my patella tendon for my ACL. I don’t have anything to compare it to, but I’ve had some tendonitis there and it still feels a little klugy.

But, AFAIK, supposedly cadaver tendons can deterioate with time, and there’s a chance of rejection. That’s what I’ve heard are the negatives anyway. I don’t know the risk levels of those things.

20

I just got my MRI results. The tech said I have a “huge meniscus tear”. :frowning: And to make matters worse, the loose tissue has wrapped around and wedged under my ACL. That’s why I can’t straighten my leg. So I definitely need arthroscopic surgery to fix it. I’m already scheduled for Thursday.

Now for the good news! I’m feeling much better. I can move the leg and even walk on it a little. :smiley: