Running In Place

I’m going to jump to the important part first and tell you all that my knee DOES feel quite alot better! (thanks for the stroking). But even though I didn’t keep you in suspense till the end of the post, I’m still going to spend some time whining about my day.

First of all, at 4:30 this morning I totally did not feel better. In fact, my knee had stiffened up to the point that any movement of the leg was painful, and attempts to bend it were excruciating. I hobbled to the bathroom, tears streaming, and downed some ibuprofen, then my kind husband propped my leg up on some pillows to give it some support. I dozed on and off for another couple of hours and, upon awaking, found that I had a little more range of motion and a little less pain - enough to stand up from the toilet without help anyway. I contemplated my options.

Option One is always to do nothing. The pain seemed to be responding a little to NSAIDS, so clearly there was an inflammatory component there that might end up being managable with good old RICE. The problem was, I was a little nervous about the onset. It was so abrupt and so acute that I wondered if it was somehow traumatic. Tendonitis is one thing, tendon rupture is a little bit of another. Muscle pull vs. muscle tear, same thing I think. I didn’t want to just nurse myself at the cost of a long or incomplete healing.

Option Two, per my HMO, is to start with my doc. Assuming he could even accomodate seeing me before the weekend, the best I could hope for would be an x-ray. My doc is a good enough guy but he’s not so good about getting to his x-ray reports so I would be pretty lucky if he got to it sometime next week (and that’s with me calling the office and hounding him). Then, assuming it’s a soft tissue injury - which would not necessarily be evident on the x-ray, he’d order a CT scan - which I would immediately have done and then wait a week for him to read. Two weeks from now, when he finally gathered all his information and made a diagnosis or referral, my problem would either be resolved on its own or I would have suffered painfully through much lost treatment time. Totally went down that road already with my stress fracture.

Option Three, as I saw it, was to hit the Urgent Care Center. Hopefully, it would be my one stop shop. I’m not going to say it was easy, fun, or quick but at the end of 3.5 hours time I knew that I had an effusion behind my patella (as in, fluid behind the kneecap). Not surprisingly, the prescription is RICE but at least I know that it’s not something too horrible. I got signed out of work this weekend and have a follow up with my own doc on Monday to see if there’s improvement. The hope is that the fluid, with some TLC, will reabsorb into my system - though if it doesn’t, it may have to be aspirated with a big, gigantic needle that will make me faint.

In terms of discomfort right now, I feel about 70% better, and that’s pretty damn great. It could be the RICE + NSAIDS and/or it could mean it’s starting to resolve some, I don’t know. But as long as I can sit down to pee with the confidence that I won’t have to call somebody to stand me back up, I’m a happy girl.