Knee Officially = Toast

[railenthe]

“Wow.”

“Yeah.”

“Crap.”

Three short words in a tiny doctor’s exam room mean much more than I though they would.

I’m partially feeling vindicated and partially wondering why it took so long to find out. Last Friday, I’d gone to see if I could get some freelancing done (gotta have money to feed the starving writerbrain after all) when—on a perfectly normal step with two of my best friends watching it—my knee decides that now is an awesome time to slide the hell out of joint.

I’m pretty sure the resultant shriek might’ve scared a few people in the next building.

I’m in enough pain that I can’t consciously direct my fall somewhere safe, so I wind up hitting my head, while with my other hand I’m trying to prevent my kneecap from going anywhere else it’s not supposed to be. Somehow I manage to wrench it back into the proper place, and I have to grit my teeth against the physical contact as my friend helps me gimp over to the couch. The swelling started almost immediately—but I knew something was just plain off about this one.

…of course, a vicodyn later, I reeeeeally don’t give a fuck. I concentrate on bending my leg every once in a while because otherwise, it will lock into place.

Not even a whole day later, I’m napping after work and suddenly, the familiar sawing-buzzing-pulsing pain in my leg alerts me to the fact that my knee has simply drifted apart again in my sleep. (I bet the neighbors thought I was getting flashbacks again.) Again, I wrench it back into place. The leg feels more wrong than it did the day before. I make an immediate call to the doctor’s office to have the thing looked at.

“Work keeps sending me to physical therapy,” I answer. “…I just try to keep a lot of anti-inflammatories in my system to keep it from getting as big as a brick.”

“…yeah, that’s not going to do you any good.”

“It’s bad enough that I’m beginning to think that lupus isn’t such a joke.”

“I don’t think it’s lupus. Normally that doesn’t cause joint damage. And you don’t have any arthritis anywhere.”

Well, crap, I think. “Then that means…?”

“I have no idea what’s happening to your knee. But it’s pretty obvious the thing’s falling apart.”

“Lemme get this straight.” I put a finger up, ticking down the facts. “We don’t know why this is happening. We do know it’s dis-integrating. And we’ve done everything that can be done outside of busting it up and putting it back together again.”

“Not how I would’ve put it but basically.”

“Nice. How the Sam hell did I mange that.”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

---

Yep. My knee is officially toast.

Comments

[toffeethesnob.livejournal.com]

Oh Rai... *hugs*

Any chance to save it at all or are they planning to...well fit you for a new one?

[railenthe.livejournal.com]

The ideal fix is to go in and reconstruct the connective tissue, then patch the knee back up when it finally takes and then enter physical therapy. However, we haven't even pinpointed why it's deteriorating in the first place--doc's actually as stumped as I am, we only know what it ain't.

And knowing what it ain't, ain't the same thing as knowing what it is.

If the ideal solution fails, though, then yes, it's time to get fitted for a brand new kneecap. (And probably the bone endcaps too, depending on what the damage is.)

All I know is I can now say "SEE, I TOLD YOU IT WAS TOAST" to the people who thought it COULDN'T be that bad. xD

[toffeethesnob.livejournal.com]

Oh geez, it sounds terrible.

I might try and have a word with my brother-in-law to see if he knows anything or knows someone who might have an idea. He's an army doctor who specializes in tissue repair (he wants to try and study ways of saving shrapnel infused tissue though I think he's more a hand guy than a knee guy) so he might have come across a similar case. From what I gather the knee started to go caput after the initial injury, right? If you give me the necessary details I can try emailing him and seeing if there is any information that can be gained if you want?

Warning: this sounds just as painful as it was

[railenthe.livejournal.com]

We're not positive how it happened. I've always had sort of weak knees (my set shot is great, but what passes for my jump shot is a JOKE. VERY little vertical distance). The first time it went out on me, I was sweeping a floor, not even standing on that leg, when KAPOW--patella's out of place somewhere to the left of everything. The leg didn't support weight--or straighten, or bend--for a few months. There followed a lot of hobbling around on a cane before I could go to physical therapy, got it up to the point where the legal shenanigans were done with but the knee still didn't feel right. For one, to this day I still have muscle spasms and an intermittent burning pain in the leg, situated a bit below the knee and a bit above.

Week after that, the knee goes out again. This time I was lifting the corner of a mattress. This time there's also a sound like

KA-TAK!

and I feel a snap. This makes time #2, being pretty much a year ago this week. Orthopedic surgeon says if it keeps up we need to consider cadaver ligaments. Except workman's comp 'conveniently loses touch' with us.

Fast forward to September--I was walking normally and pivoted right. Foot's not on the ground and knee does the same thing again. I'd been sore all week so I was wearing a brace that time. Landing knocked it back in. Trip to the doctor got me grief about my weight, and I started trying to exercise lightly again, but the knee had lost some of its range of motion by this point--left me unable to sit cross-legged or stand up at all without a snapping stabbing pain.

Fast forward to last week. Walking normally. This time my weight IS on that leg and I go straight down, hit my head (thank the gods for carpet!) and have to spend a while reassembling my sense so I can wrench the thing back into joint. Takes two benadryl, an Aleve, and some vicodin before it shuts up. One of my best friends had to drag me to the couch, because it was about an hour before the thing would support weight.

2 days later. I'm asleep.

And then I'm not because the thing has gone KAPOW while I was sleeping on my back. I'm comprehensible enough after a while to wrench the thing back into joint again, but that's when I KNEW the problem's bigger than "My frame isn't used to carrying this amount of weight. Trip to the doctor yesterday confirmed my suspicions: the knee's kinda falling apart and the doctor who'd first posited that, apparently said that if it does that one more time it should be repaired.

Since it's happened FOUR times now...

[glacialphoenix]

Oh, no. D: *hugs* Crossing fingers for a fix for your knee.