Last Tuesday, I busted up my knee something special. I tripped and fell full length. My upper body hit the grass but my right knee was the first spot to make landfall. Nothing’s broken. In fact, I got up and finished walking my dog, because he has to poop even if his mistress is a stone cold klutz.
At first, I had a scrape on the outside of my right knee, just below the bend, and a half-moon bruise around the kneecap on the inside. By nightfall, my knee, above an below the bend was massively swollen. At first, the swollen area was just white and unbruised (but numb and kind of sickly looking.) As the swelling has receded, the bruise has spread so know it goes from the original half-moon across my kneecap and around the outside of my leg to the back. The numbness is gone. It hurts if I bend it, including sitting at my desk, but I can walk on it ok, when I need to. If I sit in a recliner, it doesn’t hurt, stretched out.
I’ve been doing the Rest, Ice & Elevation parts of RICE pretty much continually since it happened. But it hurt too much for the Compression part. At first, even wearing pants was painful. Now the swelling is better, I’m fully clothed, and I’m trying out an ace bandage. It’s kind of a wash, in terms of pain. It feels better in some ways and worse in others.
All of that is just the backstory. Here’s my questions:
Is it safe to use an Ace bandage across such a massive bruise?
Should I have sucked it up and used the bandage on day 1?
Would that have prevented the swelling and massive bruising?
I’m worried about using ace bandages with bruises and maybe causing blood clots - am I being irrational about that? I can’t remember why it worries me, except of course, that bruises are blood clots, sort of.
Thanks for your advice!