Knee Injuries

Now, where do I begin.

About 4 years ago in a football tournament I did my knee in, and despite knowing it was a bad injury (the instant swelling gave it away) I continued playing through the tournament that weekend.

When I got home and actually took my first rest for the weekend I lost all feeling in my knee and lower leg. I went to hospital where they gave me a steriod injection and put me on crutches for 2 weeks.

Now, 4 years later, and many x-rays, MRI Scans, 1 more steriod injection (your only able to have 2 otherwise long standing problems occur) I still have the problem.

I have had 2 arthroscopies and one further surgery to correct the problem. After the first one it led to me damaging my ACL, yet the surgeon couldn't work out how. I have had those metal braces you see WWE wrestlers have more times than I care to remember.

After the last operation (March this year) they gave me the all clear damage wise internally, yet the pain in my knee is constant, and any physical activity causes swelling, yet there is no actual physical damage inside my knee and the surgeon cannot pin point an actual problem.

Then, last week we finally established that my patella does not run properly, and the only cure is to have knee realignment surgery, which would mean that I wont be able to walk at all for 6-9 months and then the same period to learn to walk again, and at 25 its not something I want to do.

So, until I feel I can have the operation I have to live with the pain, and 2-day swelling whenever I participate in physical activity.

That would teach me next time to not play football when I know I have a problem.
 
Hello Bobster, Sorry to hear about your injury.

I ruptured my acl playing football last september - read this thread below for my experince of the whole thing and antoher guys perspective is on there too!

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17823635&highlight=username_pablob

Sounds to me like you might have a full ligament rupture to me!

See what the MRI says first off course but if you have done something like this you'll will need to have to have the ligament reconstructed - this is if you want to play sport again. You can lead a normal life without this but if you play a lot of sport then have the surgery! MRI should give a good indication I've still got my slide films and the detail is immense. You'll probably have an arthroscopy just to they can poke a camera in there and get a better idea of the damage - you'll get knocked out by a general but it's a painless op and I walked out the same day so don't worry about that!

If you need to have the reconstructive op They'll either graft some of your hamstring or use the patella tendon - latter was my method and doing vast reading on the subject i'm pleased with that!

Happy to answer any other questions you may have

Good luck mate!
 
when i was about 16 i took a nasty fall on my bike and completely ruptured my anterior cruciate ligament. the symptoms sound quite similar to me.

When mine happened It took the doctors over six weeks to diagnose it, and when i first went in i was screaming in pain as they tried to fully bend it, thinking i had only twisted it or something.

After a while of having done it, every now and again it would sort of slip out of joint, and would feel like its dislocated, and i would fall over on it. it was really nasty. As i was only young, they weren't allowed to do a reconstruction as it involved a bone graft, whcih wouldn't work if i was still growing.


Anyhow, after one arthroscopy, and a full ligament reconstruction it is now almost back to where it started, i'm now 20, and I had the surgery just under a year ago. Thankfully i was given one of the best knee surgeons in the country to do the operation, and was walking again without crutches in about 5 days, and the first part of the recovery process was pretty quick, it was only starting things like running and twisting which took a lot of time.

They said that the ligament graft still won't be up to full stregnth until almost 2 years.
 
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Well, bit of an update. Bad news :(

I went for my MRI last Monday and i was at the hospital again today for the report. I've totally ruptured my Anterior Cruciate and i have some meniscus damage, not too sure what damage i've done to my miniscus, i have to go back again in a week or two to see a proper knee specialist. So, it's the worst case scenario as far as i am concered.

Over the past couple of weeks its been feeling ok to be honest. I just get a bit of pain around the knee cap going up stairs, i do still have my brace on though so i suppose it's not giving me a proper idea of how things are.

Well, i'll be back to see the specialist and physio's in a week or two and we'll just take it from there.

I really want this repaired as i love playing footy, i'm gutted. I'm not really doing an exercise at the moment either because of it either. I'm getting fat(er) :p

Arghhhhhhh <----sorry thats just how i feel :(

It's even more annoying too as it wasn't even really my fault, some daft idiot mistiming a tackle.......man i'm soooo frustrated!!
 
Bobster said:
I really want this repaired as i love playing footy, i'm gutted. I'm not really doing an exercise at the moment either because of it either. I'm getting fat(er) :p

Arghhhhhhh <----sorry thats just how i feel :(

It's even more annoying too as it wasn't even really my fault, some daft idiot mistiming a tackle.......man i'm soooo frustrated!!
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This is how I feel. I see my surgeon tomorrow to find out more about what he did to my ligament and I'm hoping he repaired any damage found. The worst feeling is the not being able to get in the gym and squat. I feel fat, old and weak and it's driving me nuts. Can't wait to get over this.
 
Hopefully a good orthopedic doc will put you back together again. Just follow what physio says as well.

Been holding off posting my knee injury since its been a bit of a downer for me.
Dont know if mine was an inherent problem or caused by sport(but no football involved in this, just badminton).
Had an arthroscopy many many moons ago on my right knee and part of the joint lining was taken out, this was done after several steroid injections in to the knee and bucket load of physio.
All well and good. Fast forward several years and pain is back. So in for another arthroscopy and all look ok, bit of wear to back of knee cap which was ground smooth.
All seem fined till 2 years later pain was back, so back in again for another look round, nothing out of the ordinary just a bit of tidying up was done.

12 months later pain is back, so off for an MRI.
MRI was clear, no arthritis, no loose bits, no broken ligaments. all looked good, but they couldnt explain the pain. Was offered a patelerectomy(sp) ie remove the knee cap and hope that fixed things. Mean while i've constant pain down the inside of my right knee with the added bonus of sensation that my leg is wet from the knee down! Feels weird to say the least.
Patelerectomy is canned and im sent to pain management.
Lenghty consultation with Pain doc and come to conclusion i have Type 2 RSD/CRPS in my knee. Now starts the fun stuff. Say hello to lots of tablets and BIG BIG bout of depression. Ive had arthrotec, did nothing. Been through most of the pain killers you can think off(co-proxamols work the best but they are no longer certified).
Then we move onto the other treatments, i had 3 sympathetic blocks done under local. You lay on a bed under an x-ray and shove a huge great big needle into you back looking for a cluster of nerves. They find em then numb them. In the process if they touch a nerve as they did with me, you get the pain of being hit in the nuts with out the physical impact and they did it twice first time :mad:
3rd one they found a nerve cluster and that set of pain in about 5 places across my back simultaneously.
These didnt last as long as they hoped, no more than 5 days.
So onto more drugs, this time pregabalin which is used for treating epilepsy. That just about wiped me out and i was only on 75mg a day. Some ppl take upto 1500mg a day!!!
Mean while my depression during all this took a huge nose dive to the point of being suicidal, i could only hack so much of it, but the thought of my kids kept me going.

Where am i now.
A hell of a lot better, no more pain killers or anti depressants.
Still got the pain and funny feelings in my knee, but Started cycling in April and working on the "keep fit, feel better" ideal. Taking care of knee but using pedals with lots of float.

RSD/CRPS is a pain(sic), since it nerve related there is very little they can do. Some times they can destroy the nerve junction in your spin with a caustic injection, these are very hit and miss.
Other times it's just a case of keep trying different combinations of drugs and see if they help reduce the problem. I got off lightly compared to some i know.
In the end after alsorts of pots and potions, Pain management simply said, sorry we cant do any more, go self medicate best you can, bit of a blow.

To the OP, im sure they orthopods will do there best to put you right. I had a damn good orthopedic surgeon.
Dont give up hope, i nearly did and it aint worth it.
 
Ed said:
This is how I feel. I see my surgeon tomorrow to find out more about what he did to my ligament and I'm hoping he repaired any damage found. The worst feeling is the not being able to get in the gym and squat. I feel fat, old and weak and it's driving me nuts. Can't wait to get over this.
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Yeah, thats how i feel. I haven't excercised properly for about 2-3 month.
Good luck with your recovery anyway Ed

Shoei said:
Shoei's post
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Jesus christ, you've had a right time over the years :eek:
Thats wet feeling down your leg must be a bit weird.
Keep your chin up mate.
My issue pales in comparison.
 
Bobster said:
Jesus christ, you've had a right time over the years :eek:
Thats wet feeling down your leg must be a bit weird.
Keep your chin up mate.
My issue pales in comparison.
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Cheers.
The wet feeling is fun sometimes, first noticed it washing up, thought i'd spilt water down my leg. Putting my daughter to bed one night, thought her nappy had leaked, 5 mins of checking and all is ok.

Knee's are amazing things and do stand up to a hell of a battering.
I have utmost faith in the NHS and what they can do(pain management are an exception, RSD/CRPS doesnt exist as far as some docs/surgeons care)
Biggest advice i can give is rest it and once they do op on it, take your time going back to sport, even if it takes a couple of years to get back to where you were at pre-injury.
 
Shoei said:
Cheers.
The wet feeling is fun sometimes, first noticed it washing up, thought i'd spilt water down my leg. Putting my daughter to bed one night, thought her nappy had leaked, 5 mins of checking and all is ok.

Knee's are amazing things and do stand up to a hell of a battering.
I have utmost faith in the NHS and what they can do(pain management are an exception, RSD/CRPS doesnt exist as far as some docs/surgeons care)
Biggest advice i can give is rest it and once they do op on it, take your time going back to sport, even if it takes a couple of years to get back to where you were at pre-injury.
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I must admit i have been very supprised at how good the NHS have been over the past couple of weeks. The time in between appointments is my only gripe.
Yeah, i'll certainly take it easy if/when i end up having an op to sort it. I wish i could just turn back time (or fast forward) so things were as they were.
 
The MRI will help tell exactly what is wrong. It could be a number of things I'm sure.

Shoei, I feel for you man. that sounds rough!!

"My Knee Tale"
I hurt my knee a few years ago playing football (which I rarely did anyway!) and the doctor told me to take ibuprofen to reduce the swelling. it was very painful when i first injured it.
Eventually the pain went but the swelling never really did and it was uncomfortable to kneel on. Went to see about it getting sorted a few times...always got the ibuprofen talk....
Anyway, 2 years down the line I went back to the docs for a 3rd time and saw someone else about it. He felt how much it crunched when i bent it and got me an MRI. They found it was initially cruciate damage and I also had cartilage floating in there so they booked me in for an arthroscopy. It turns out I also have the beginnings of arthritis there too. :rolleyes:
The op helped and my knee is much stronger now. I can do all my usual gym stuff on it too although i have to take the running easy. I've no doubt I have some fun to look forward to in later life. I'm only 30 so the arthritis is very early for someone my age.
 
Bobster said:
Ah right. Will your knee(s) get better?
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Hopefully :).
Edinho said:
Think you need to see a decent Physiotherapist.
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No, he's great actually. He's spent a long time helping me stretch my hamstrings more, and work on my calves to offer proper support for when I return to running, as we both know I will.

He's offered me a lot of useful advice, and helped me strengthen my knee over a long period of time that should hopefully see me return to proper running without having a great deal of pain from it.

My treatment of rowing, cycling and no impact sports has been great, and the one or two runs I've done have felt so much better, my knee feels properly supported. And if it takes me a year of no running, and careful nurturing, to avoid surgery then I'm all for it.
 
My god, I have a 5-a-side tournament later this afternoon and I should not have opened this thread. My brother currently has a broken fibula and I still have a bruised big toe from from football 8 weeks ago. No wonder my gf calls it a dangerous sport.
 
Shoei said:
Cheers.
The wet feeling is fun sometimes, first noticed it washing up, thought i'd spilt water down my leg. Putting my daughter to bed one night, thought her nappy had leaked, 5 mins of checking and all is ok.

Knee's are amazing things and do stand up to a hell of a battering.
I have utmost faith in the NHS and what they can do(pain management are an exception, RSD/CRPS doesnt exist as far as some docs/surgeons care)
Biggest advice i can give is rest it and once they do op on it, take your time going back to sport, even if it takes a couple of years to get back to where you were at pre-injury.
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What was the initial problem you had with knee for first sugery? I have a somewhat similar story with knees though mine started at 15ish with sinovial plicae. Which is a thickening of folds along the sinovial membrane which, well which fixing is essentially taking some of the lining out so wondering if we had the same thing.

I had a horrible time with it though for about 18 months i had doctors just insist it was osgood schlatters and stretching and time would fix it. Went though hellish increasing pain going back just being told it was nothing. Eventually had to go private to see a specialist, and the ****** **** simply had me jump up and down, which hurt like hell but because I had movement it was nothing and smeg off. A friend pulled some strings about 2 weeks later, got a NHS guy to see me who diagnosed the problem in about 30 seconds of touching my knee something the private guy simply didn't bother to do.

Had it in both knees, essentially all people get folds in the membrane that increase the strength of the membrane and in some people for no reason they keep growing. They had gotten pretty big, needed cutting out basically, both knees, and had been bumping the back of my kneecap wearing it down but not smoothly, at time of ops they said one of my knee caps was jagged and basically cutting the inside of my knee as it moved, all thanks to being ignored for 18 months.

Seems due to size of chunks removed I got scar tissue back in its place, less bad, but still a problem and removing scar tissue will almost always give worse scar tissue so not worth going again. SO had chronic pain for a decade now and its had a massive impact on my life and with depression too.

So I had a crummie time with the NHS, mostly because its all about seeing the right person which is a shame.

I also tottally agree about pain management, no help there at all. THe other kicker was even though I finally saw a good doctor he was way to optimistic and seemed to simply think it was an easy fix so I was so glad. Then 2 weeks after surgery we saw him he only then said along the lines of, well its not healed as well as we hope but some people take 2-3 months to recover rather than 2-4 weeks. 3 months later follow up, oh well, some people take 6-9 months rather than 3. follow up after a year and he was like, oh well, for some people it really doesn't help all that much, that was always a possibility but he never told us that. It was much more gutting having it happen that way than being told from the beginning that it might not get better ever.
 
drunkenmaster's said:
Drunkenmasters post.
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Yep, mine started out as problems with the sinovial plicae. I had jabs and all sorts of physio to try and fix mine before they went in.

I think my RSD/CRPS is a result of nerve damage during my second or 3rd op.
Like you say, since you have movement in it, they dont see anything being wrong and with no real visible swelling or any other indications of a problem as far as they are concerned sometimes all is well, must be in the patients heads!

I have a very tender spot on the inside of my knee, plus pain round the knee cap and across the back of my knee. Sometimes its hot, some times it feels wet.
It woken me up in the night and nigh on reduced me tears at the same time and stopped me sleeping when ive gone to bed. I'd be popping co-proxamols/tramadols/accupan like they were smarties to help with the pain.
MRI's have shown nothing out of the ordinary.

Cycling has helped, given me some thing to focus on. No more pills any more.

Dont know where you are in the country, but the best pain management centre i know of is at Bath i think. They deal with a lot of RSD/CRPS stuff.
If it aint Bath it's Bristol, but been a while since i used the RSD/CRPS forums so have lost track with things.

I know how you feel with the depression, i didnt expect it to be that bad or to hit that hard and it had a serious effect on my home life.
 
Its all so irritating though tbh at the moment I seem to feel its better to not entertain the thought of pain management, as to a point it only entertains the idea it will get better and makes me realise how bad it is, if you see what I mean?

I had the steroid(cortisol probably, been so long) injections to help with swelling for the first year but after a while the week of less pain(if that) wasn't worth it as the pain came back and as with anything, it seems worse when its been gone for a bit. Where just being at the same level of pain constantly you kind of get used to it. SO th esteroid would give me less pain for a week but the appearance of worse pain for a few weeks, and then could only have the injection every few months.

I think maybe it has been a little better recently, as much due to better diet as weight loss i think. Been eating far far far more healthily and lots less of foods that tend to cause inflamation and lots of foods that help reduce inflamation so wonder if thats had a lot to do with it.

The last time I spoke with doc's about it, years ago now, they did mention knee replacements as options but said doing it before you get quite a bit older is a very bad option as basically they don't last so the second your first one goes in, you almost have a time limit till you won't be able to walk anymore. THough probably they'll come up with something in 20 years to extend that time quite a lot, last I heard they could last up to about 7 years a pop and can hopefully have it done 3 times, which only gives you 21 years, so at 20 years old its a very bad choice.

I had a PE teacher at high school, of all subjects, who needed 2 replacement knee's and she was in chronic pain and always in a bad mood because of it. She was in the same situation, waiting till its either completely unbearable, or till an age where its not so bad to have it done.

For me the worst part of it was, i think the pain started at 15, right when i was playing tons of football/riding bike a lot and ALL my friends were playing footie or riding bikes, I suddenly went from outside all the time to stuck indoors away from my group of friends, then operations finally which being both knee's I had a long rehab and wasn't in school for ages and became depressed and very withdrawn, it was just such an incredibly bad time to get bad knee's. I lost touch with so many people because it was end of GCSE's and I moved on to a different school where due to pain I wasn't there much and had the same issue. I felt insanely angry about it, still now when i think about it, because if I hadn't been ignored for so long and they'd found it much earlier the operation would have been much simpler, damage to knee cap probably wouldn't have happened and scar tissue would most likely have been much less severe. Oh well :(
 
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Bobster said:
Hello, i've been meaning to post here as i have done a little bit of damage to my knee recently playing footy.

I'm just really after some other peoples experiences of knee injuries so i know what to expect with regards to recovery times etc.

Basically about 2 month ago i was playing 5-a side and got tackled as i was stretching for the ball and it absolutly killed my knee.

I managed to play on in goal but i could feel there was something not right with my knee. It felt very unstable and sort of loose.

I went to the docs and he said it was just a bit of ligament damage. It didn't swell up much or anything like that it was just sore if i twisted it or bent it too much.

About two month later i played again as i thought it was ok. I had been going to the gym and had been on the treadmills and bikes etc and all seemed well.

So, i tried playing footy again, big mistake!

About 10 minutes into the game i was just running and it just gave way. This time it was more painfull than the last. It wrecked!!

That night it was very painfull and the next day i could hardly bend it. There was lots of swelling above my knee cap and bruising down the right hand side (right leg) and behind my knee in the crease of the knee.

Anyway i went to hospital and got an xray etc. There is a chipped bone but thats not a worry to them apparently.

They don't really know what damage has been caused until i get an MRI scan.

I've now got a brace on my leg for the ligament damage i presume, i've had to keep my leg strait for two weeks and on monday just gone they adjusted the brace so i could bend it upto 90 degrees.

I still however don't really know what the issue is as i am waiting on an MRI scan (no private health care, so i am waiting on the NHS, 6 week wait apparently). At the moment it doesn't really hurt much apart from if there is weight on it when bent. Going up the stairs for instance give me a little pain around my knee cap.

Anyone had anything similar or have any idea of what i might have done?

It's getting me down a bit to be honest, i love playing footy :(
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Exactly the same thing happened to me back in May. Only just recovered from it. Like you, I kept thinking it was alright. I didn't take a break from footie though, just used my left foot for most things. Anytime I did use my right, I would be in agony again.
 
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