The patello-femoral joint :

Pain in my good knee - - Posted by imnotpunk (imnotpunk), 13 January 2005

Hey all -
So my left knee (my "good knee") has been absolutely killing me again. When I'm going up and down the stairs (the gimp way, mind you), I feel a LOT of pain in the left knee along with some clicking and crunching. Last summer my chiropractor said I probably had a meniscal tear, which made sense to me because I've suffered from meniscal tears before and it does feel very similar. The pain would come and go, but lately it's coming more than it's going. I'm also experiencing a lot of pain in the tendon. My PT said I probably have severe tendonitis in the knee; I'm prone to tendonitis and the chances of rupturing my other tendon greatly increases because of already rupturing the other patellar tendon.

Anyways, I never got it checked out, and I'm wondering if maybe I should finally tell my OS about it or even talk to a GP about it. I've been favoring my right knee for two years now and my left knee doesn't seem like it has too much left in it anymore; I've put most of my weight on it for a long time now. I was talking about this with a man at PT today who is in need of a double TKR. For most of his life, his problems were always in one knee, but because he had to favor that knee and put a lot of weight on the "good" one, he wore down all the cartilage and tore the menisci up nice and good, thus needing both knees replaced. I'm basically worried that at this stage of the game I'm starting to do some damage to the good knee if it's not already somewhat damaged already (ie the torn meniscus).

Anyone have any input or suggestions? It would make sense to talk to my OS about it, but at the same time I'm thinking he's just going to tell me basically what I wrote in this post, therefore I won't get any new information or ideas for treatment. I guess the worst-case scenario would be an eventual scope on my good knee to clean it out, otherwise I'd just have to do some PT on it and make sure it's nice and strong seeing as it's taking the brunt of my weight anyways.

Thanks in advance and sorry for rambling (as I tend to do!)

Best wishes,
Patricia
Posted by Vickid4788 (Vickid4788), 13 January 2005

Hey patricia....I have really no advice but I want to let you know that I really enjoy your rambling.   Please don't stop.   Hope things work out ok.  

Vicki
Palatine, IL

Posted by sha22 (Sharon), 13 January 2005

Hi Patricia,

My advice is to go and see your OS about this pain. I was in a similar situation a few months ago with my good knee. I had been having pain in it for a few weeks and for awhile I tried to convince myself that there was nothing wrong because I really didn't want to have to deal with my good knee going bad on me too. But in the end I decided to go to my OS and as I had thought, I had patellar tendonitis, which I had before but not as severe. He sent me to PT and I've been doing that for 6 weeks and it's slightly better. (Although you wouldn't know that from the way it feels tonight. Darn those new exercises in PT-and me for opening my big mouth and telling my PT that bridging was too easy, so she found a way to make it more challenging-and more painful!!!)

He said the tendonitis was from favoring that knee for so long. And I know that I do tend to favor that knee, especially when I'm at work because I'm on my feet most of the day as a substitute teacher. I also can't walk up or down stairs with my bad knee too much so alot of the time I have to use only my right leg to do stairs, especially going down.

Anyway after all of my rambling, my best advice is to see your OS. Mine told me that the most important thing for my good knee is to get it as strong as I can so it will be able to take all of the stress that's being put on it. PT on that knee has definitely been doing me some good so I'd suggest maybe trying that and seeing if it can help you.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

(((Hugs)))
Sharon
Posted by shadehawk (shadehawk), 13 January 2005

Hi Patricia, I have to agree with everyone else on this one.  You should really get it checked out by your OS.  

Maybe it is nothing to worry about, but then again one just never knows and it is better to be safe than sorry later on.

Good luck.  

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