A few days after I hurt my right knee playing soccer (the Sunday before Thanksgiving), it wasn’t getting much better—it was still really painful trying to bend around to put on socks and pants, let alone climb stairs—so I went to the doctor to have her take a look at it.
She laid me down on table and we were chatting about what happened while she was holding my leg up and moving it around. I didn’t scream at any point, so she was pretty sure there was no ligament damage. As a safety measure, she had some x-rays of my knee taken, which also didn’t reveal any problems.
Regardless, something was wrong. Pain is usually a good indicator of that. To aid the healing process, she gave me a knee immobilizer—it was a giant 22” brace that had a solid piece of plastic in back with a slight bend to keep my knee from moving and seven large Velcro straps across the front to keep anything from moving. Consequently, putting on socks and pants was still a problem.
Then the doctor told me two things. First, if my knee wasn’t feeling better after a week, I should get in touch with her again and she’d refer me to a physical therapist and an orthopedist (a specialist who treats bones and joints). Second, wearing the knee immobilizer should get me lots of pity from my family at Thanksgiving and I wouldn’t have to do anything but eat.
She was halfway right about that second part. No one made me stump around the house to try and set tables or anything, but after various family members confirmed that the brace wasn’t because of knee surgery, I got no pity whatsoever. Bummer…
I was better, but not great after the week was over. Admittedly, I cheated and took the brace off at various times. I could only handle riding in the backseat and having other people drive me to school for so long before I decided to wear the brace up to the car, take it off to drive, then put it back on when I got back out. I had to readjust the straps multiple times during the day because of that, which can be awkward when you’re waiting for class in the hall and each of the seven Velcro straps makes a loud ripping sound every time you pull them apart to tighten them up.
I also took it off for a Wilderness Medicine class when I had to demonstrate how to check for a spinal injury. One of my classmates was lying on the floor and I had to poke one of her hands to test for sensation, then reach across and check the other hand. If you’ve ever tried squatting down and reaching across a person’s body with one of your legs sticking straight out to the side… it only took about 15 seconds before my butt muscles were ready to give out, so I ripped the Velcro open and tossed the brace to the side (according to my knee, I did that a little faster than I should have).
But like I said, the week ended with only some improvement. I made another appointment, went to the clinic and the doc told me to ditch the immobilizer. Sure, it did some good, but if I kept using it for too long, some of my legs muscles would turn into rubbery goo. I’m told that’s bad. In its place, she gave me a foam-like sleeve to put over my leg with a hole over my kneecap that I’ve been using ever since. I also kept the knee immobilizer because, hey, it might still have some pity value in the future.
The doctor gave me phone numbers for the physical therapist and the orthopedist, so I made appointments with each office. My second PT appointment was yesterday and I was feeling okay. They have a special squat machine there where you lie back on a cushion that slides up and down some tracks at a slight angle, then you add weight using a pulley system and avoid straining anything too much. While doing squats on that machine using only my right leg, everything was fine except for one certain angle of my knee. I’d start pushing up, “That hurts”, then push the rest of the way up with no problem. On the way down, I feel fine, “There it is”, then I’m all good. While I knew when and where it hurt, I didn’t know why it hurt until I visited the orthopedist this morning.
Unfortunately, I got to the office and spent 1½ hours there to get a brief and fairly simple explanation about a slight abrasion on the back of my kneecap and the cartilage on the bottom part of my knee. I still don’t know if it happened when I kicked the ball or when I landed, but my kneecap shifted to the side slightly and scraped against the cartilage. Whenever my knee reaches the point where they scraped, that’s when it hurts and that’s ultimately what caused the swelling of my knee cartilage and the meniscus that’s been bugging the crap out of me for a couple weeks now.
So the final verdict is that there are no tears in the cartilage or ligaments and thus no permanent damage. My knee is continuing to get better and it should be just a matter of time before I’m healed up enough to play soccer and start hurting other people again. How long that will take… thinking about that bugs the crap out of me, too, but I still have to start each day putting my pants on one leg at a time like everyone else. The biggest difference now is that I don’t have to find new and interesting ways to wiggle around to get my right leg inside without bending my knee.
