My knees have been aching lately, thanks to the barometer doing a reasonable impression of a roller coaster, plus the rib on my left side that responded to me trying to ease the pain in the cracked rib on the right side floating out of place and throwing everything out of whack. ("does your rib hurt tonight?" DM asked me the other night, "A little, why?" I responded. "Because it looks like it's trying to jump out of your back." )
Anyway, I recently had a couple of friends to visit, one of whom is an anthropologist. We spent a couple hours in the car, followed by several hiking up and down a mountain, followed by a couple more hours in the car. Home again for pizza and alcohol until late in the evening, at which point I mentioned that my knees were feeling a little sore.
And demonstrated that the swelling (minor, for what it has been in the past) would bulge out the other side of the knee cap when you pressed on one side. Absentmindedly I started rubbing at my knee and the anthro gal suddenly cringed. I realized then that I'd rubbed my kneecap off to one side... yeah apparently that's far more disturbing than the swelling thing.
We then spent some time with me demonstrating the things my knees will do that they apparently aren't supposed to and still let me stand up, and I've been told that if I ever make it to Albuquerque anthro gal knows a couple people who would love to x-ray me. Or maybe cat scan. Cause apparently my knees shouldn't let me stand up.
The orthopedic surgeon's daughter just cocked her head to one side and commented that she'd be interested in seeing how the muscles surrounding differed from "normal" in order to compensate for the instability.
I do think making the anthro gal cringe and get all squicked out means I win forever, though. I am a little worried that if they ever manage to get me in front of an ortho to demonstrate that I'll wind up in surgery before you can say "knee replacement."
They don't hurt that bad....
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Ego Strokers
9 comments:
Long term horse riding? Any other riders have similar knees?
Lots of varied abuses, Well Seasoned Fool. Basically my knees are jacked up cause I've never been nice to them.
Everything from hurdles in high school to landing on them from various heights to long days on my feet on asphalt and concrete. I'm sure riding contributed, but frankly on horse back is one of the few places I can be certain I won't end up with sore knees at the end of the day. For the most part, anyway.
I've got bad knees too, though not as bad as yours (though the left kneecap is screwy...). Horseback riding's fine, its the getting off and walking afterwards that gets me! I keep saying they don't hurt that badly too....
Being of an age where I know many folks who have had knee replacement surgery, the usual complaint I hear afterward is:"Why the hell did I wait so long?"
I have one knee that I've had operated on twice and arthritis. I am 47, and looking forward to a knee replacement should I ever be lucky enough to get one.
In the meantime, I recommend Horseman's Dream Liniment Lotion. I've been using it since the spring on anything that hurts and it has helped immensely! About $11 for a big bottle. Save your copay.
I'm pretty sure the horseback riding is actually the reason she can still stand and walk with patellar tendons like that.
It's always interesting when someone tells you "There's no way you could walk with knees like that!"
Except you do and it's not even that hard.... Sort of makes me feel a little superhuman. Of course I haven't been riding nearly as much lately and from the evidence I think LR is right, my knees have gotten more unstable as the muscles I use while riding get out of shape.
Not awfully unstable just enough to notice a little wobble.
.45ACP+P the only thing that worries me about a knee replacement is that it won't fix the instability since that comes from, as LabRat said, the patellar tendons. To be honest I have no idea if they're stretched or torn or what, if they're reparable or not.
What I do know, from mom's surgery and the discussions we had, is that you lose some range of motion. You can do a lot to fix side to side instability with PT, but there comes a point with the replacement that if you keep pushing for range of motion you lose stability.
My knees ache occasionally and they, rarely these days, make walking or standing or doing just about anything really suck. The bit where it feels like there's velcro inside them catching when I try to walk is really unnerving when it happens. But they're still functional, and for the most part I don't notice that I have knee problems.
I'm not ready to go through double knee replacement and with the problems I have and the way it works I suspect that only replacing one at a time would drive me nuts, along with actually making the non-replaced knee WORSE.
So I'm sure when I get around to it I'll probably say the same thing, but I'm just not ready to deal with the replacement yet, even if I could pull the money for it out of thin air.
LOL, you need to take her up on that, if nothing other than for the X-ray/MRI :-) And free knees 'might' be in the offing!!! :-)
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