Knee pains

Ever since I was young, I've had bad knees. When I was 8 or 9, I was playing in a soccer tournament when I had 3 players fall on my fully extended knee and hyperextend it. I rested it for about a month, and I was cleared to get back on the field. A year later, in another tournament, we were playing in the semifinal game when out of nowhere, that knee just gave out. I could walk on it, but it felt loose. I couldn't generate any drive off that leg, and kicking was nothing more than me forcibly swinging the leg forward because the knee joint just didn't want to work. Doctors exams and x-rays showed nothing so everyone thought the worst was over. Oh, how they were all wrong...

I'm tall. I was always tall for my age. I grew a lot between 6th grade and 7th grade, and I had some serious knee pains during that initial growth spurt. If you've never had Osgood-Schlatter disease, let me tell you that it's not a pleasant thing. If you didn't go to the link, Osgood-Schlatter disease is a condition where the growth plates in your knee, for lack of a better term, split. The tendons connecting the kneecaps to the shinbones pull away from the shinbones. If you think that sounds painful, I can let you know that, yes, it is very painful.

I was a very active child, much much more active than my mostly sedentary lifestyle. That's part of what caused the issue. Years and years of basketball, soccer, and tennis put wear and tear on my young body. In the end, from ages 11-13 or so, I had to ice my knees after each time I ran even a little. Thankfully I finally stopped growing (when I was 18), but the pain abated soon after I turned 13.

Knee troubles didn't take long to come back, though. Freshman year of high school in 1994, during basketball season, I didn't warm up properly and just jumped into a pickup game. First play in, the opposing team grabbed the rebound and hit the outlet that had leaked out for an uncontested layup. My philosophy is to never give up an easy basket so I took off at a dead sprint. I didn't get there in time and oddly decided to try and stop on a dime. I succeeded, sadly, and in the process hyperextended/sprained my knee. That put me out for about a month, but thankfully I did no real structural damage.

Knee issues over? No, but it would be many years before they would resurface. In 2007, after a nasty ankle injury (my ankles are actually worse than my knees, but that's a different post) I returned to basketball which actually caused the ankle injury in the first place, but I digress. I played an entire season with no troubles. Then, randomly, after waking up from a nap, I couldn't straighten or bend my knee any further than what it was stuck at when I woke up. Instead of calling out to M for help or maybe calling an ambulance, I forced my own leg straight to "fix" it. Much crunching and popping later, I realized that it may not have been the best of ideas for me to do so. Throbbing pain followed my stroke of genius, and a visit to an orthopedic surgeon was made.

X-rays and MRIs later, it was found that I had dislocated my kneecap while sleeping. The tendons in my knee had gotten so stretched from my injuries that the kneecap just slid out of place. Forcing the leg straight did pop it back into place, but I had destroyed a fair amount of the cartilage in my left knee. Luckily I managed to avoid any damage to my ligaments and tendons. Rehab for this injury went for about 3-4 months, and I got myself back on the basketball court (no, I never learn). Two or three seasons went by, and I wore a brace the whole time. Much of my mobility came back, but the knee never felt quite right. It was sore on and off regardless of whether I exercised or not, and I had to take pain medication prior to playing basketball to make sure I didn't feel any pain while playing. The drawback of that, however, was that I couldn't tell that I was destroying my knee in the process.

I took a season off to try and see if the rest and basic rehab exercises would relieve the pain. I then continued to take time off as M and I planned our wedding and attended several of our friends' weddings. It was in August of 2009 that I was in Chicago for a friend's wedding when I found that there really was something wrong. Walking through a revolving door to get back to our hotel, my knee seized up in intense pain. I couldn't put any pressure on my leg, and I basically crumpled to the floor in the lobby of the hotel in pain. Sadly, since M and I were getting married soon I didn't have a chance to get myself checked out prior to the wedding.

It took a month or so for M's insurance company to get me added, and even after that, we were busy with the holidays and trying to dig out of the mess of our apartment. Finally in March of 2010 I was able to see an orthopedic surgeon recommended by many of my basketball teammates. More x-rays and MRIs later, they found a tear in my post-medial meniscus. Surgery was scheduled for early April, and it went off without a hitch. It has now been over 6 months since surgery. I've done endless hours of physical therapy and rehab, and I've been safe about the activities I do. I'm not pain-free, but it's manageable, and it will lessen over time if the surgeon is to be believed. Now I'm finally able to get back on the courts and work my way back to actually playing (seriously, I never learn).

M warns me to take it easy, and to be honest, this time I really am. The old me would have jumped right back in without building my strength back up first. I was hoping that my knee problems would be past me, but I know that I have years of arthritis to look forward to as I grow older.

So you may be asking yourself what this post has to do with anything, and in all honesty, I really don't know. I guess I wanted to put down all of my knee injuries.

Look, it's my knee post-surgery!