Knee pain

My life is just one big injury/problem area. If it’s not my knee, it’s my heart. If it’s not my heart, it’s my back. If it’s not my back it’s my teeth! And now it’s my knee again!!!!

I have no idea what happened but my left knee (the one that was operated on 18 months ago) has been a bit sore this week. Then yesterday it started having sharp stabbing pains through it, on the inside of my knee right where one of the arthroscopy scars is. It got worse throughout the day and last night is was causing quite a bit of pain. I even dreamt about my knee pain would you believe…

Today every 5 minutes or so, I would get this sharp throbbing pain in my knee that would last for a few seconds and go away. Apparently from the look on my face it was obvious when I was getting the pains!

I don’t get it while I’m walking though, it’s really only while I’m sitting down, and given that I sit down at my job, by about 10:30am I was very much over it and booked myself in for the physio at 2pm.

The physio said that my left VMO was a whole lot weaker than the right one. She was impressed with the right one, and apparently it stood out, but she couldn’t even see the left one. My ITB’s were quite loose, which she was also impressed with and surprised about. She was thinking that my ITB’s were tight which was causing patello femoral syndrome. She thought that given that I’m just getting back into training that it was just tight, but that theory got blown out of the water.

So there’s not much strength in my left VMO, my glutes are really weak (which is also what I was getting told after my knee op), and my knee was sore when she was massaging over the main scar from my scope. So her theories were along the lines of (a) that either when I was jogging last week or walking on the weekend I may have just pulled something that was tight from scar tissue around that scar, (b) because the VMO and glutes are weak, getting back into training is just going to be hard on that leg while it’s weak, and I might have just aggravated something in my leg which connects to my knee or (c) I’ve twisted my knee somehow and just done some minor damage to a muscle or something either in that area, or elsewhere that’s referring pain to that area.

I also remembered that after my job last week my quads and hammies were feeling quite tight, so maybe that had something to do with it.

So she’s given me some exercises to strengthen my glutes and VMO, told me to massage over where the scar is a couple of times a day, and to make sure I keep my leg fairly straight, especially in bed, because I’m a side sleeper, and your knee can twist a bit in bed if you lie on your side, and you can put pressure on it the wrong way while you’re sleeping.

The pain was a bit better this arvo, less often and not as painful, so hopefully with a couple of little exercises it’ll be fine.