Patellar problems

Here's a nice shiny new blog site for me to post about my ailing knees! I have been using livejournal for my blog posts, concerning everything (not just the knees) but at least now here is a place directly specific to my ongoing knee problems.

http://akam-i.livejournal.com/ is the place to go if you are interested in reading any of my previous entries. The recent ones are knee-related, to find other blogs on my knees you'd have to delve pretty far, so I will summarise here:

I had this popping pain on my knees for a few years and was occasionally suffering pain, so I decided to get it looked at. Was referred to physio, who diagnosed a tight ITB. I was given ITB exercises which helped a little, but not much. Five months later I was back in the hospital and only then did they decide to x-ray me.

It was discovered I had tilted kneecaps which had most likely been that way my whole life. I had an arthroscopy in the left knee to see what was going on, that was Feb 2005. Six months later I had a lateral release in the same knee. Four months later the popping problem returned, although my kneecap was straight. April 2006 saw me having a lateral release in my right knee, which is still okay even now with no return of the popping on that side.

April 2007 and I had yet another knee surgery on the left side, to try again to discover the cause of the popping and to try and rectify it. They couldn't find the cause, not without full open surgery and I'm not having that just yet. They did find some tight fibrous bands which they cut, and I had more patellar debridement.

I've recently been having some recurring swellings on the left knee which are starting to get annoying due to the frequency of their occurrence. Today I saw a doctor and had my left knee syringed, she removed 25ml of fluid and I was able to bend the knee a lot better, not to mention walk! The fluid levels had been so high that they were interfering with normal leg movement required for walking!