Knee injury

[mstrofbass]

I'm gonna go have an ortho look at this sometime soon, but wanted to see if I could get some insight before I go, since I am suspicious of orthos, thanks to Rip. I think I have had TWO separate knee injuries, but I'll detail both of them just to make sure everything is out there. And maybe someone can enlighten me on what the first one might have been.

Sometime last summer I twisted my knee, and was in quite a bit of sharp pain for a couple of days. It was a minor twist (I think I was literally just walking), and the pain wasn't THAT bad; I could still limp around without too much trouble.

It would flare up anytime I wore my VFFs. There was absolutely no pain when I was squatting either, only when I was walking. After squatting it would feel much better, and a couple of workouts later it would feel almost as good as new.

It flared up again last fall, and I saw the doc about it (they made me see a normal doc before they'd let me see the ortho). By this point I had discovered that, with my knee bent, if I pressed really hard into the joint, I could get a little bit of pain, generally in the locale of where the ACL attaches to the tibia. I was playing flag football, and it would flare up a bit then, but not too bad. When it did flare up, I felt what is best described as looseness of the knee joint, as if I was lacking stability. When I would squat, during the squat at depth felt great, but when I was standing, if I didn't make sure to keep my knee in line with my foot while standing, it would feel as if the joint was slightly twisted, as if the femur was rotated inwards more than the tibia. The doc said the knee stability was excellent, and it may be some tendonitis. This was sharper than the tendonitis I had in my elbow, and did not respond at all to ice, but would feel better after some heat.

I didn't play anything over the winter, and took a break from lifting. Started back up in January, and the knee pain flared back up. The symptoms were mostly the same, the only differences is it hurts when I squat, and slowly got worse (possibly due to some form issues I had), and the location of the pain. When not under squatting/deadlifting load, I've noticed the pain flares up pretty bad when I straighten my leg as much as possible, as you do when you're waking up and stretching. The odd thing that happens when I do this is I think it puts pressure on whatever is injured, and my body short circuits my stretch of that leg and causes my muscles to go limp for a brief instant (think car ABS...it's EXACTLY like that). As far as locating the pain, if my knee is bent at a 90 degree angle, I can press all around and not really get any pain. I'll even press and try to get behind the patellar tendon (or whatever it's called), and don't feel much. If I press at the top of the tendon, I get a very MINOR pain.

What REALLY hurts is when my leg is straight, and basically press into the tendon and move it upwards. Once it hits the bottom of the patella, I get a decent amount of sharp pain. Still doesn't really respond to ice, and definitely hurts to go up and down stairs. Not having had patellar tendonitis before, it seems like it could just be that, except there are enough odd things that I don't want to commit to that yet.

Any thoughts? Did I just waste everyone's time for something simple like patellar tendonitis?

[^pala]

Well, I'll tell you one thing. I have had an experience with Knee injury, since I myself got injured on my right knee, an meniscus tear.
Twisting your knee is one of the more common ways to injure it (that's how I've done it also). The symptoms varies between the level of the injure that you caused.
I would be certain that you injured your meniscus of you wouldn't experience pains while straightening, as pains mostly should come when you bend / squat. Anyways, I'm no expert, so maybe straightening your leg can cause pains.
When I had my injury, I had visited 3 doctors:
1) normal doctor, he made an X-ray of the knee, and found nothing.
2) another doctor who made an ultrasound pic, also found nothing
3) I went straight to the surgery room, where there they found the problem.

Why neither of the first doctors found anything? Simple, if you have an meniscus injury, nothing but MRI can scan and find it if it's really damaged. If you want to check it further and maybe get a stone off your heart that your meniscus is fine, make an MRI test, and show the results to some sports doctor

I hope I helped with my experience.